Alternative Heuristics for Large Scale Capacitated Requirements Planning Systems

Abstract

Performance improvement for requirements planning systems is an issue which receives wide interest. Many programming approaches have been proposed to improve material requirements planning procedures. However, most of them appear to be too complex for large manufacturing problems. Alternatively it might be promising to explore the integration of materials requirements planning and capacity requirements planning. Several simple heuristics for integrated requirements planning systems are suggested. Several heuristics are offered to balance the load in the systems and several procedures presented to adjust the planned requirements so that the system will execute more smoothly. An industrial example supports the adequacy of the general concepts provided in this research. Results are presented which demonstrate the adequacy of these heuristics, and illustrate the ease of implementing the procedures into any MRP system.