Production control in moving bottlenecks in conditions of unit and small-batch production

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Since the production is aimed at fulfilling specific needs of demanding customers and not at filling warehouses, the production volume should reflect the volume of orders. In times of fight for the client every order has to be performed on time. What is more, in times of fight for shortening the delivery cycle, meeting safe deadlines, that is distant in time, is not enough. Companies are forced to meet short deadlines with keeping the product price competitiveness condition. It is hardly possible without a proper, APS (Advanced Planning System) class, advanced planning support system. Currently, advanced planning systems are coming into use, however their cost exceeds the possibilities of small and medium enterprises and algorithms used often require great customization to industries’ needs and conditions of unit and small-batch production. The paper has been drawn on the basis of research on overloads of moving bottlenecks in conditions of unit and small batch production in real conditions having a big number of resources and tasks. The methods used so far are not capable of finding the global optimum of such big data ranges. At present few working enterprises in conditions of unit and small batch production, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), are exploiting techniques of the production process optimization. For this reason computer tools for applying to the industrial scale are needed. The above method basis on the data so far collected in computer systems. Results of preliminary research were introduced from applying the possibility of TOC (Theory of Constraints) to the industrial scale for reducing bottlenecks in unit and small batch production. The authors built a heuristic algorithm which could find solution good enough and based on TOC assumptions and verification of assumptions using tests in real production systems. The above method found application to the industrial scale, as extension of the ERP class system.