Virtual Enterprise Planning System using time windows and capacity constraint concepts

In a global market, the trend for geographical dispersion of manufacturing plants has been observed. This dispersion is motivated by the opportunity to exploit local advantages under different viewpoints. This structure also allows for more intense interaction between plants of different productive enterprises. In this sense, the concept of Virtual Enterprise (VE) is fundamental to explore new business strategies such as “focus on core competencies”, “maximal customer orientation” and “distributed production”. However, in this new productive structure, there are new requirements for planning and for establishing the delivery date of the orders. To address these new requirements, this work introduces a Virtual Enterprise Planning System (VEPS) based on “time windows” and “capacity constraints”. These two concepts have been used extensively in the literature related to conventional planning systems: however, not in the VE context. In this approach, “time windows” delimit the allocation interval of the tasks in the production systems (PSs) involved, while “capacity constraint” makes the time windows feasible considering the importance of the due date.