Production scheduling optimization: A case study from the alcohol industry

Abstract

The study deals with the production scheduling process of a small family run company that produces alcoholic beverages. The company is currently ran by two brothers, which are responsible for all the activities carried out inside the company. In the last couple of years, the owners felt a growing necessity to make their activities more efficient. Time is the scarcest resource for the business and they need to use it wisely. After some analysis, the owners realized that production is indeed the most time consuming activity inside the business. This is due to the high number of inefficiencies that the activity causes. Some of them are related to malfunctioning of old machinery, while others are related to the lack of a strong scheduling system. Currently, scheduling is completely done by hand and, as seen in literature, this is not the optimal way to manage the production process. Inefficiencies during production cause two main issues inside the business. The first one is the high number of overtime hours worked, while the second one is the difficulty to manage the warehouse. There is also a third problem tied to the poor mapping of the production process activities. The owners are not able to evaluate correctly investments on new machinery. They can have an idea on which are the benefits of a new piece of equipment, but they cannot concretely quantify them. Therefore, the goal of this thesis will be to help the business into developing an automated production scheduling system and improve the performance of the production process. The main objective will be to create a tool that minimizes the time dedicated to production. This tool will also help with warehouse management and evaluation of new investments.