Long-term Capacity Planning with Multi-process Routing for Mould Enterprise

Long-term capacity planning is a strategically important macroeconomic policy-making for mould enterprise, having a large influence on the investment cost and profit. This paper develops an integer programming method of long-term capacity planning considering the multi-process routings of mould parts. Firstly, a multi-process routing model of the mould parts is proposed based on the net flow theory. With the constraints of the flow balance of the net nodes and the capacity limit of the facilities, the integer programming mathematical formulation is then developed. Finally, a typical case of a real-life mould industry is studied and solved using a commercial package called LINGO. The results show the validity and practicability of this method.