Applied Planning and Control in Operations Management

Aim

After taking this course, the student should be able to:

• correctly select, use and evaluate planning and control methods in various industrial sustainable production environments and then be able to analyze and use these methods more effectively in an increasingly digitized environment,
• model and, with the help of a commercial software, solve and evaluate linear continuous and discrete optimization problems with the aim of being used as decision support within sustainable production environments
• understand the basics of a commercial business system (ERP) and describe its main function, as well as understand how digitization can make the use of the business system more efficient and its possibilities for processing large amounts of data.

Content

Manufacturing planning and control is the backbone of operations in any service company or manufacturing company. In today's global competition and digital environment, new methods and techniques for planning and control have emerged. Despite this, traditional methods and techniques in planning and control still dominate, and in connection with these traditional planning methods, optimization is often used as decision support. The course is therefore structured around a part that focuses on modeling optimization problems and three parts that address some of the existing planning paradigms.

• The first part is based on optimization as decision support, where the focus is on formulating, solving, and evaluating the solution of continuous and discrete optimization problems, both in linear programming (LP) and integer optimization (HP). The formulation is first done mathematically and then this formulation is rewritten in a commercial software which then solves and presents the solution.
• The first paradigm covers efficiency-based management, with the base in Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII) which includes Net Requirements Planning (MRP). This paradigm includes, for example, customer order management in Master Planning (MPS) and capacity planning at all levels within MRPII.
• The second paradigm covers constraint-based management with e.g., theory of constraints (TOC) and drum-buffer-rope (DBR). This paradigm contains on hands planning in DBR.
• The third paradigm is lean-based management with e.g., rate-based scheduling and includes the use of Mixed-Model-Scheduling within Final Assembly Scheduling.

Each paradigm incorporates advanced level methods and techniques, but also the latest developments in digitalization and sustainability. How to use Artificial Intelligence and Enterprise Resource Planning systems in each management paradigm is discussed together with the impact on sustainability. Finally, so called hybrid systems are covered where methods from the different management paradigms are combined to fulfill more complex requirements from an operations strategy perspective.