Billions of dollars are tied up in the inventories of manufacturing companies which cause large (interest) costs. A small decrease of the inventory and/or production costs without reduction of the service level can increase the profit substantially. Especially in the case of scarce capacity, efficient production schedules are fundamental for short delivery time and on-time delivery which are important competitive priorities. To support decision makers by improving their manufacturing resource planning system with appropriate methods is one of the most of production planning. interesting challenges The following chapters contain new models and new solution strategies which may be helpful for decision makers and for further research in the areas of production planning and operations research. The main subject is on lotsizing and scheduling. The objectives and further characteristics of such problems can be inferred from practical need. Thus, before an outline is given, we consider the general objectives of lotsizing and scheduling and classify the most important characteristics of such problems in the following sections.

This thesis deals with timing and sizing decisions for production lots, and more precisely, with mathematical models to support optimal tim ing and sizing decisions. These models are called lotsizing models. They are characterized by the fact that production lots are determined based on a trade-offbetween production costs and customer service. Production costs can be categorized as basic production costs, which consist of material costs, labour costs, machine startup costs and over head costs, and inventory related costs, which include costs of capital tied up in inventory, insurances and taxes. Customer service is the capability of the firm to deliver to their clients the products in the quantity they ordered at the agreed upon time and place. The costs of realizing a certain service level are usuaIly very dif ficult to convert into money. They include costs of expediting, loss of customer goodwill, and loss of sales revenues resulting from the short age situation.

The logic of Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) is im plemented in most commercial production planning software tools and is commonly accepted by practitioners. However, these peo ple are not satisfied with production planning and complain about long lead times, high work-in-process, and backlogging. As many researchers have pointed out, the reason for these shortcomings is inherent to the methods that are used. The research community is thus eager to find more sophisticated approaches. This book is an attempt to compile some state-of-the-art work in the field of production planning research. It includes mate rial that somehow dominates the existing MRP II concept. 15 ar ticles written by 36 authors from 10 countries cover many aspects related to MRP II. All papers went through a single-blind refere eing process before they were selected for being published in this book. When we received papers for this issue, we discovered that MRP II is a topic about which not only management scientists show interest. As the list of authors proves, industrial engineers, computer scientists, and-operations researchers from academia as well as practitioners have contributed to this book. This, we hope, makes the book of value for a broad audience. We thank all authors who submitted papers. And, we are in debted to Dr. Werner Muller from Springer for his support in this book project.

This book is dedicated to questions of production planning and scheduling activities both in general and in semiconductor manufacturing environments, which have the characteristics of high volume and high mixture. It explores topics such as shop models, work-in-process management, the treatment of setup times, basic techniques of lot batching and splitting, lot sizing and group technology approaches, as well as rescheduling questions. A number of directions for further research is suggested in the book, and a broad collection of references is provided.

This book is a guide to modern production planning methods based on new scientific achievements and various practical planning rules of thumb. Several numerical examples illustrate most of the calculation methods, while the text includes a set of programs for calculating production schedules and an example of a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Despite the relatively large number of books dedicated to this topic, Advanced Planning and Scheduling is the first book of its kind to feature such a wide range of information in a single work, a fact that inspired the author to write this book and publish an English translation. This work consists of two parts, with the first part addressing the design of reference and mathematical models, bottleneck models and multi-criteria models and presenting various sample models. It describes demand-forecasting methods and also includes considerations for aggregating forecasts. Lastly, it provides reference information on methods for data stocking and sorting. The second part of the book analyzes various stock planning models and the rules of safety stock calculation, while also considering the stock traffic dynamics in supply chains. Various batch computation methods are described in detail, while production planning is considered on several levels, including supply planning for customers, master planning, and production scheduling. This book can be used as a reference and manual for current planning methods. It is aimed at production planning department managers, company information system specialists, as well as scientists and PhD students conducting research in production planning. It will also be a valuable resource for students at universities of applied sciences.

​Due to a varying product demand (changing product mix) and different production speeds, bottlenecks may shift between the stages. In that case, a simultaneous lot-sizing and scheduling of these stages is recommendable. Hence, an improved version of the General Lot-Sizing and Scheduling Problem for Multiple production Stages (GLSPMS) was developed. Moreover, several reformulation techniques were applied to this model to solve it exactly. Besides, a new meta-heuristic which combines the principles of Variable Neighborhood Decomposition Search (VNDS) and Exchange was implemented to find good solutions, even for a real-world problem case. Finally, further model extensions, e.g., for scarce setup resources, were proposed.

This book is the outcome of my research in the field of multi levellot sizing and scheduling which started in May 1993 at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (Germany). During this time I discovered more and more interesting aspects ab out this subject and I had to learn that not every promising idea can be thoroughly evaluated by one person alone. Nevertheless, I am now in the position to present some results which are supposed to be useful for future endeavors. Since April 1995 the work was done with partial support from the research project no. Dr 170/4-1 from the "Deutsche For schungsgemeinschaft" (D FG). The remaining space in this preface shaH be dedicated to those who gave me valuable support: First, let me express my deep gratitude towards my thesis ad visor Prof. Dr. Andreas Drexl. He certainly is a very outstanding advisor. Without his steady suggestions, this work would not have come that far. Despite his scarce time capacities, he never rejected proof-reading draft versions of working papers, and he was always willing to discuss new ideas - the good as weH as the bad ones. He and Prof. Dr. Gerd Hansen refereed this thesis. I am in debted to both for their assessment. I am also owing something to Dr. Knut Haase. Since we al most never had the same opinion when discussing certain lot sizing aspects, his comments and criticism gave stimulating input.