Often multiple production lines (or machines, ceils, or departments) produce a group of related products. In these environments, the following interrelated planning decisions must be made:
- Choosing the speed at which each line will run, 2. Determining which products to produce on which lines, and 3. Determining the number of workers assigned to each line. These decisions directly affect a plant's labor and capacity utilization and are quite complex if the number of products and lines is large. For the purposes of cost estimating to bid on new work, labor negotiations, and training, these planning decisions must be made before precise demand information is available. Yet in many industries, such as the US automotive industry, restrictive labor agreements force the plant to live with these planning decisions for long periods of time. This paper enunciates this production planning problem actually facing industry, formulates it mathematically, and provides a practical solution approach.