Finite capacity material requirement planning with supplier constraints

Abstract

This paper develops a practical finite capacity material requirement planning (FCMRP) system that considers finite capacity of work centres and constraints of suppliers. First, a variable lead-time MRP system is used to transform the customer orders to planned work and purchase orders. The purchase orders are evaluated and revised by the suppliers based on their constraints. Second, the system schedules manufacturing operations on key work centres of not only the factory but also suppliers. Third, a linear programming model is used to determine the optimal start time of each manufacturing operation to minimise the overall performance index, considering finite capacity of all work centres, precedence constraints of operations, and supplier constraints. The proposed FCMRP system is tested using an experimental case. The results indicate that all scheduling mechanisms have significant effect on the overall performance index and the FCMRP system with supplier constraints can generate more realistic schedule than the system without supplier constraints.