Available-To-Promise modeling for multi-plant manufacturing characterized by lack of homogeneity in the product: An illustration of a ceramic case

Lack of homogeneity in the product (LHP) appears in some production processes which incorporate raw materials that originate directly from nature and/or production processes with operations that confer heterogeneity to the characteristics of the outputs obtained, even when the inputs used are homogeneous. Poor LHP management may have a very negative impact on the customer service level and on the supply chains’ operation costs, especially when the customer needs to be served with homogeneous units of one same product. One of the key processes for suitable LHP management is the order-promising process. This work presents a mathematical programming order-promising model for make-to-stock environments with LHP. The model considers two objectives placed within a single objective by the weighted sum method. For the purpose of testing the validity of the proposed model and to evaluate the characteristics of the solutions obtained in different scenarios, numerical experiments based on realistic data from a ceramic tile company have been conducted. The results show that better results are obtained for the defined performance measures if multiple objectives are considered when promising orders than the single objective of maximizing profits. Furthermore, the superiority of the results obtained from the proposed model, if compared with current company practice, proves the model’s utility.This research has been carried out in the framework of the project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, entitled "Personalizacion en Masa y Cadenas de Suministro Inteligentes, con Productos y Procesos Complejos (PER-MACASI)" Ref. DPI 2008-06788-C02-01, and the project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Ref. DPI2011-23597) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Ref. PAID-06-11/1840) entitled "Methods and models for operations planning and order management in supply chains characterized by uncertainty in production due to the lack of product uniformity" (PLANGES-FHP)".Alemany Díaz, MDM.; Lario Esteban, FC.; Ortiz Bas, Á.; Gómez, F. (2013). Available-To-Promise modeling for multi-plant manufacturing characterized by lack of homogeneity in the product: An illustration of a ceramic case. Applied Mathematical Modelling. 37(5):3380-3398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apm.2012.07.0223380339837