Integrated production planning, shift planning and detailed scheduling in a tissue paper manufacturer

Abstract

The thesis is about the implementation of an integrated planning system in a large tissue paper manufacturer in Turkey. The manufacturer operates over four production facilities in di erent geographical locations where two of the plants are owned by the company while the other plants are owned by two separate contractors. The manufacturing process is composed of two phases. In the rst phase paper is produced as a bulk in the form of paper bobbins. In the second phase, bulk paper bobbins are converted into end products, like toilet papers, paper towels, napkins, etc. Although all plants are equipped to perform the converting operation, only one plant has a paper production facility. The company operates in an highly competitive market. Its products are fully substitutable by the products of its competitors. The company tries to ful ll customer demands through a number of sales channels. The main purpose of the company is to prevent loss of sales by continuous feed up of sales channels. Pro t margins in the sector are very low. To be able to increase pro ts, company aims to decrease operational costs such as process, transportation, setup and inventory holding costs. In this thesis, we developed a planning system where main objectives are to decrease the operational costs, to increase customer service level and to increase responsiveness of planning department to fast changing conditions. The planning system is composed of three integrated models to solve the capacity planning, shift planning and scheduling problems. All three problems are solved by an mixture of optimization methods and heuristics. The planning system is implemented in ICRON Supply Chain Optimization System. Capacity planning and shift planning models have been in use since January 2011 and scheduling model has been in use since March 2011.