A new decision-making structure for the order entry stage in make-to-order environments

In this paper, we propose a new comprehensive decision-making structure for the order entry stage in make-to-order (MTO) environments. The aim of the proposed structure is to manage the arriving orders so that the MTO system just proceeds to produce those arriving orders which are feasible and profitable for the system. The appropriate decisions on the arriving orders are taken based on two criteria including price and delivery time. The arriving orders have either fixed or negotiable delivery times. The proposed structure has five major steps. At the two first steps, the new arriving orders either are rejected or appropriate decisions to meet their delivery time are made. At the next step, the optimal prices along with delivery times (if negotiable) of non-rejected orders are determined by a mixed-integer programming model. In the case of the final approval by the customers at the fourth step, another mixed-integer programming model is launched to select a set of suppliers and subcontractors that are able to provide required raw material and workload of the new the accepted orders. Moreover, numerical experiments are presented and a simple example is illustrated to show the applicability of the proposed mathematical models. r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.