Ramp-up planning for alternative product portfolios in a multi-product-multi-stage production system

Abstract

The importance of production ramp-ups has increased owing to dynamic changes in endogenous and exogenous business environments. There is consequently a need to develop approaches for product portfolio and capacity management for the production ramp-up when multiple candidate products are considered to be launched. In this paper, we develop an optimisation model for the ramp-up planning of multiple candidate products that share common resources. We consider the product launch schedule with the problem of capacity planning to realise a profitable production system when demand increases after a product is introduced in the market. We suggest four different types of ramp-up strategies for managing multiple candidate products according to the available capacity. Numerical analyses show that a sophisticated ramp-up strategy aligned with the company’s capacity management supports realising a profitable production ramp-up. We expect that the model developed in this paper supports decision-making related to successful ramp-up production.