Requirements planning with order selection and demand timing flexibility

Requirements planning problems in the operations literature nearly always assume that a producer must accommodate each member of a set of predetermined demands. In many instances, a producer may actually have the freedom to choose the orders it wishes to fulfill based on the profitability and timing of the individual demands. Recent research has addressed new classes of requirements planning problems with such order selection flexibility [3]. When customers have flexibility in when (within certain time windows) they will accept delivery, this increased flexibility can further increase the supplier's profit. This paper considers the impact of the added dimension of demand timing flexibility within the class of integrated requirements planning and order selection problems. We establish structural properties of optimal solutions that, under mild assumptions, lead to efficient solution approaches for combined order selection, demand timing, and production planning problems.

Requirements planning with order selection and demand timing flexibility Conference Paper