An improved decision support model for scheduling production in an engineer-to-order manufacturer

This paper outlines a mathematical model to solve a scheduling problem for a company engineering and producing propellers to order. Nonås and Olsen (Comput Oper Res 32(9):2351–2382, 2005) have previously introduced a Mixed Integer Programming model for this production setting with the objective of minimizing the total tardiness. The mathematical model could however not be used to solve realistic sized problem instances, because of the very large solution time. We propose a new time indexed formulation that can solve most industrial problem instances in less than 10 min. This work is further extended by taking into account limited storage capacity and by proposing different methods to balance between total tardiness and maximum tardiness. We illustrate how the solution time and the criteria change for different setups of the mathematical model and suggest which setup to use for different scenarios. The paper also discusses how the new model can be extended to include unexpected events such as emergency orders and unavailable production equipment.