Capacity Modelling in Production and Supply Chain Planning:
History and a New Approach

Jakob Asmundsson
Sangwook Hwang
Reha Uzsoy

Laboratory for Extended Enterprises at Purdue
School of Industrial Engineering
1287 Grissom Hall
Purdue University
West Lafayette, In 47907-1287
ph: (765) 494-0829
fax: (765) 494-5448
uzsoy@ecn.purdue.edu


A fundamental problem in the domain of production planning has been that of developing computationally tractable aggregate planning models that accurately capture the nonlinear relationships between workload and lead times. Most current planning algorithms either use lead time estimates that are independent of workload, essentially assuming infinite capacity, or use detailed transaction-level models to capture shop dynamics, resulting in poor scalability. We give a brief review of existing models in this area, and propose a nonlinear approach based on clearing functions that yields extremely promising results. We provide computational results examining different aspects of such models, such as the effects of different shop floor scheduling policies and lot sizing techniques.