A Model of a System for Hierarchical Planning of Structure and Dimension of Internal Global Production Networks

The continuing trend towards distributed production in a network of production sites confronts companies with new challenges. Complex logistic interdependencies of networked production lead to an increased need of coordination and planning.Since conventional production planning and control systems are designed for single-site production they lack functionalities to handle requirements arising from distributed production. In this paper a concept for a planning system designed to fill this gap is presented. This planning system is characterized by a hierarchical decomposition of the complex task of structure and dimension planning of the internal production network into sub-problems and relating these sub-problems to the organizational decision levels of a multi-site company. In the hierarchical planning process introduced in this paper optimization models are used to solve the sub-problems defined before. One of these optimization models is exemplarily presented in detail.