International Business Machines Corporation

Robert James Wittrock

Brenda Lynn Dietrich

Markus Ettl

Aliza Rivka Heching

Karthik Sourirajan

Ching-Hua Chen-Ritzo

John Peter Fasano

A method for planning under uncertainty is disclosed. The method includes steps of processing a stochastic programming formulation based on forecast values of at least one of product and service configurations, and determining a resource requirements plan for one or more planning periods in a non-deterministic bill of resources of at least two levels.

Method and structure for risk-based resource planning for configurable products

In software systems for resource-constrained production planning (RCPP), it is often beneficial to determine a detailed association, or 'pegging', between the resources and the shipments that are enabled by those resources. Presented here is a software-implemented method for constructing a pegging of a production plan for an RCPP problem. The method is called 'Pegging By Explosion' (PBE). This method, takes a feasible production plan and reconstructs it, using its own specialized incremental allocation technique. A Pegging By Monitoring technique is applied to this reconstruction in order to produce the pegging. The reconstruction is accomplished by a specialized &#x201c;explosion&#x201d; technique related to the explosion technique of Material Requirements Planning (MRP).

Pegging resources to shipments in a pre-existing production plan

A method for constrained material requirements planning, optimal resource allocation, and production planning provides for an optimization of a manufacturing process by designating the amounts of various manufactured products to be produced, which products include both end products as well as subassemblies to be employed in the manufacture of one or more of the end products. In order to accomplish the optimization, the method employs an objective function such as the maximization of income in a situation wherein there are limitations on the inventory of raw materials and tools to be employed in the manufacturing process. Data describing elemental steps in the manufacturing process for the production of each end product, as well as the quantity or demand for each end product which is to be supplied, are presented as a set of linear mathematical relationships in matrix form to be inserted in a computer which determines the optimum number of each end product in accordance with an LP optimization algorithm. The matrix contains bill of material data, and various constraints such as a constraint on the sum of products shipped and used as subassemblies, and constraints based on inventory, on available time for use of resources such as tools, and on inventory left over from an early production run for a later run.

Optimization of manufacturing resource planning

A novel allocation method for generating a feasible production schedule. The method, in response to a specified requirement q, comprises the steps of determining what quantity (r) of a product can be produced with a specified quantity of supply components; allocating a required quantity of supply components for filling a thus defined partial order; and filling a remainder of the requirement (q-r) at some later time.

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Ossining, NY, United States of America

Robert James Wittrock