Multi-site aggregate production planning with multiple objectives: a goal programming approach

This paper addresses the problem of aggregate production planning (APP) for a multinational lingerie company in Hong Kong. The multi-site production planning problem considers the production loading plans among manufacturing factories subject to certain restrictions, such as production import/export quotas imposed by regulatory requirements of different nations, the use of manufacturing factories/locations with regard to customers’ preferences, as well as production capacity, workforce level, storage space and resource conditions of the factories. In this paper, a multi-objective model is developed to solve the production planning problems, in which the profit is maximized but production penalties resulting from going over/under quotas and the change in workforce level are minimized. To enhance the practical implications of the proposed model, different managerial production loading Authors: Stephen C. H. Leung, Department of Management Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Hong Kong, E-mail address: [email protected] STEPHEN C. H. LEUNG is a Lecturer in the Department of Management Sciences at City University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD in Transportation Planning from City University of Hong Kong. Before joining the teaching profession, Dr Leung was a consultant in Wilbur Smith Associate Ltd. He had been involved in a variety of projects about transport modelling and traffic impact assessment. His current research interests are in logistics management, operations management and multiple-criteria decision-making. YUE WU is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Management Sciences at City University of Hong Kong. She received her PhD in Control Theory and Control Engineering from Northeastern University in China. Her research interests are in production planning and scheduling, computer-integrated manufacturing systems, intelligent computing and supply-chain management. K. K. LAI is a Professor of Operations Research and Management Sciences at City University of Hong Kong, and he is also the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Business. Prior to his current post, he was an Operational Research Analyst at Cathay Pacific Airways and an Area Manager on Marketing Information Systems at Union Carbide Eastern. Professor Lai received his PhD at Michigan State University, USA. His main areas of research interests are in logistics and operations management, computer simulation and business decision modelling. Production Planning & Control ISSN 0953–7287 print/ISSN 1366–5871 online # 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/0953728031000154264 plans are evaluated according to changes in future policy and situation. Numerical results demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the developed model.