Due date quoting and scheduling interaction in production lines

Abstract

Scheduling is one of the most important activities of many firms, especially in a make-to-order environment, since it is used for planning external activities (e.g. material procurement) and quoting customers' due dates. Changes in schedules (owing, for example, to a machine failure) may delay activities and decrease the customer service level. Our work combines lead time quoting with scheduling decisions. We use a computer-based simulation to study a production line in a dynamic context, with multiple job types, stochastic job arrivals and random machine failures. The results of our experiment show a strict relationship among lead time quoting policies, scheduling algorithms, customer service level and cost function used to evaluate the performance of the firm and this relationship itself is shown to represent a powerful tool for production managers.