Work order release and capacity balancing in synchronous manufacturing

Synchronous manufacturing aims at achieving the benefits of intermittent production lines in other production situations as well. Benefits such as short and constant throughput times and predictable capacity loading can be acquired through an appropriate design of the synchronous manufacturing system and its control system. The work order release decision is an essential part of this control system. It determines the sequence in which products are released to the work floor. As products may differ in the amount and distribution of their capacity requirements over subsequent production stages, total capacity load may vary over time. If the available capacity per period is not very flexible, capacity balancing becomes an issue in the work order release decision. In practice, heuristics or rules of thumb are used to solve this problem. We develop heuristics and an optimal solution approach, aiming at a balanced capacity over time through appropriate work order release decisions.