Solving product mix problem in multiple constraints environment using goal programming

Abstract

The theory of constraints is an approach to production planning and control that emphasizes on the constraints to increase throughput by effectively managing constraint resources. One application in theory of constraints is product mix decision. Product mix influences the performance measures in multi-product manufacturing system. This paper presents an alternative approach by using of goal programming to determine the product mix of the manufacturing system. The objective of paper is to provide a methodology in order to make product mix decision. Key point of the proposed methodology is considering decision maker idea to determine the weights of objective functions that are throughput and bottleneck exploitation. Therefore the weights of the objective functions are determined by the information get from decision maker. Through an example, inefficiency of theory of constraints in multiple bottleneck problems has been showed. Comparison of theory of constraints, linear programming and other methods to product mix problem has also discussed to show the advantages of the proposed method.