A Literature Review on Master Production Scheduling Problems in the Automotive Industry

Abstract

In recent years, production by customer has been adapted to a very large number of industries. One of them is the automotive industry. The aim is to ensure low unit cost mass production processes and fulfill each production requirement. Production according to customer request requires flexible manufacturing equipment. In addition, this production requires a versatile (multi-tasking) and highly equipped workforce. In the automotive industry, the arrangement of end products according to customer specification requires considering a large number of optional (non-mandatory) parts. This results in a great variety of processing times at different stations of the assembly line. Multivariate and mixed-model production assembly lines in the automotive industry require five key planning problems to be considered. These; line balancing, master production scheduling, production sequencing, material flow control, and reordering. The master production scheduling problem for multivariate and mixed-model assembly lines is aimed at assigning each variant of a basic product type to production periods, depending on customer preferences. This problem requires anticipating the negative effects of an unbalanced model sequence at a low planning level (in the early stages of the planning process) and acting accordingly. This study deals with the master production scheduling problems applied in the automotive industry and provides a comprehensive literature search on the topic touched on by a limited number of studies. In addition, the dependency between master production scheduling and production sequencing and heuristic solution approaches were analyzed in detail in the study. The presented literature search is intended to serve as a guide for decision makers for the master production scheduling problems considered in the automotive industry.