Regime-change management under post-mass production

摘要

This paper considers the implications of optimum production planning for facilities where capacity is a tight processing constraint. In this environment, there are benefits to incorporating workload smoothing within the produc- tion planning process and this approach to production planning has been addressed in the literature. No attention, however, has been given to the transition between regimes. Stock incompatibilities arise between adjacent regime plans as a function of the active regime-change drivers and the timing of the regime change. The procedures of this paper. therefore, optimise the stock outcomes of regime change with respect to its timing. To highlight the stock effect, processing within regimes is assumed to have JIT properties and the facility is assumed to be single stage, in line with trends in the globalisation of production. The method is applied to an example where regime change is driven by the combined influences of demand shifts, product innovation, and process innovation. The example demonstrates the scope for significant cost savings from managing the regime change when capacity is tight, and illustrates the simplicity of the method.