Ramp-up planning for alternative product portfolios in a multi-product-multi-stage production system

•We study the decision-making problem for a multi-item ramp-up production system.•A model is used to determine both the product portfolio and the capacity planning.•A set of different product launching policies are formulated and proposed.•The managerial insights are derived from the sensitivity analyses. The importance of production ramp-ups has increased owing to dynamic changes in endogenous and exogenous business environments. There is consequently a need to develop approaches for product portfolio and capacity management for the production ramp-up when multiple candidate products are considered to be launched. In this paper, we develop an optimisation model for the ramp-up planning of multiple candidate products that share common resources. We consider the product launch schedule with the problem of capacity planning to realise a profitable production system when demand increases after a product is introduced in the market. We suggest four different types of ramp-up strategies for managing multiple candidate products according to the available capacity. Numerical analyses show that a sophisticated ramp-up strategy aligned with the company’s capacity management supports realising a profitable production ramp-up. We expect that the model developed in this paper supports decision-making related to successful ramp-up production.