A LINEAR PROGRAMMING MODEL FOR PRODUCTION PLANNING: AN IRANIAN CASE STUDY IN CEMENT

Production planning and inventory control efforts are known as the driving engines of manufacturing systems. The manufacturers, competing to survive in these days’ competitive business environment, aim to satisfy customers’ needs. This requires a precise production plan throughout the supply chain. These days, because of the increasing costs of production and distribution, especially in the cement industry, and given the importance of this industry, investors seek to reduce the production costs as much as possible, to achieve a competitive advantage. In cement industry, main focuses are converging on the alternative fuels developments, optimization of furnace fuel consumptions and sustainable and green production considerations. In this study, a mathematical model is developed to investigate the cement production plan. The objective function is to minimize the total costs of a real case of cement industry. The proposed model is applied on a case of real world application at the West Azerbaijan’s Urmia Cement Company. Sensitivity analyses are carried out on the findings of the model. The proposed model has proven to be cost efficient.