Possibilistic programming in production planning of assemble-to-order environments

For the sake of alleviating the influences of demand uncertainty in assemble-to-order (ATO) environments, the strategies of regulating dealers' forecast demands, determining appropriate safety stocks, and deciding the numbers of key machines are usually adopted by manufacturers. In this paper, we propose a possibility linear programming model to manage these production planning problems. The proposed model accomplishes forecasting adjustments, material management, and production activities. Because of price fluctuations, material obsolescence, and the time value of, capital. the ambiguity of cost is considered in the objective function of the model. We substituted the fuzzy objective function with three crisp objectives: minimizing the most possible cost, maximizing the possibility of obtaining lower cost, and minimizing the risk of obtaining higher cost. Zimmermann's fuzzy programming method is then applied for achieving an overall satisfactory compromise solution. Finally, an example is given to illustrate our model. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.