Freezing the Master Production Schedule Under Rolling Planning Horizons

The stability of the Master Production Schedule MPS is a critical issue in managing production operations with a Material Requirements Planning System. One method of achieving stability is to freeze some portion or all of the MPS. While freezing the MPS can limit the number of schedule changes, it can also produce an increase in production and inventory costs. This paper examines three decision variables in freezing the MPS: the freezing method, the freeze interval length, and the planning horizon length. Simulation experiment results are reported which suggest that freezing up to 50% of the planning horizon has a marginal effect on production and inventory cost under a wide range of operating conditions. These results also suggest that an order based freezing method produces superior results in comparison with a period based method.

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