A decision support system for integrating fishing and fish processing

Graduation date: 1993Production planning in fish processing is heavily dependent on the raw material\ud supply. Because of the uncertainties associated with the quantity of catch and its\ud composition, planning for production is a difficult task. Until recently the fish\ud processing plants in Iceland also had to accept the entire loads of fishing fleet vessels\ud whenever the vessels had opportunity to land their catch. This uncertainty and\ud randomness in the raw material supply requires frequent decisions on production plans\ud for product mix, assignment of labour to machines and facilities, and the raw material\ud inventory to be carried from one period to the next.\ud This research develops a decision support system (dss) for integrating fishing and\ud fish processing. The two primary components of dss are a simulation model and a linear\ud programming model. The simulation model analyzes the trawler operations, including\ud generating the catch, controlling the length of a fishing trip, and the order in which\ud trawlers land their catch so as to provide a steady raw material supply. The linear\ud programming model uses the output from the simulation model to determine labour\ud requirements, work-in-process inventory levels and amount of products produced so as\ud to optimize production costs. The research shows that heuristic and deterministic models\ud can be integrated to form a decision support system that can aid in effective decision\ud making