Aggregate production planning with workforce transferring plan for multiple product types

This paper presents the aggregate production planning for multiple product types where the worker resource can be transferred among the production lines. A mathematical model was formulated in spreadsheet format. Then the spreadsheet-solver technique was used as a tool to solve the model. A real situation of a manufacturing company was selected as a case study. The actual data was used to test and validate the proposed model. The optimal aggregate production plan provides the information on managing the available production capacity together with the useful workforce transferring plan. The obtained solutions were compared to those of another approach where the workers cannot be transferred among the production lines. The total cost is significantly reduced when the workers are allowed to transfer among the production lines.