A heuristic model for justifying the acceptance of rush orders in multi-plants manufacturing supply chain with outsourcing

This study proposes a heuristic model to justify accepting rush orders in a multi-plant manufacturing supply chain with outsourcing, and applies rescheduling and simulation approaches in the model. This investigation compares the reward of accepting rush orders in the model with the extra cost of accepting rush orders. If the reward is greater than or equal to the extra cost, the model accepts the rush order. Otherwise, the rush order should be rejected. To calculate total costs, this study applies the APS method to schedule all jobs in the supply chain. To verify the model, this research uses three non-controlled order acceptance methods to compare with the heuristic model. The three order acceptance methods are: (1) rejecting all rush orders, (2) accepting all rush orders, and (3) randomly accepting rush orders. The results show that the proposed heuristic model performs better than other non-controlled order acceptance methods.