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. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.