Evaluating alternative MPS development methods using MCDM and numerical simulation

One of the key elements in production planning hierarchy is master production scheduling. The aim of this study is to evaluate and compare thirteen alternative MPS development methods, including multi-objective optimization as well as twelve heuristics, in different operating conditions for multi-product single-level capacity-constrained production systems. We extract six critical criteria from the previous related researches and employ them in a MCDM framework. The Shannon entropy is used to weight the criterion and TOPSIS is proposed for ranking the alternative methods. To be able to generalize the results, 324 cases considering different operating conditions are simulated. The results show that the most important criteria are instability and inventory/setup costs, respectively. A performance analysis of MPS development methods is reported that the heuristics provides better results than multi-objective optimization in many conditions. A sensitivity analysis for critical parameters is also provided. Finally, the proposed methodology is implemented in a wire & cable company.