Modeling and Optimization of Aggregate Production Planning - A Genetic Algorithm Approach

The Aggregate Production Plan (APP) is a schedule of the organization's overall operations over a planning horizon to satisfy demand while minimizing costs. It is the baseline for any further planning and formulating the master production scheduling, resources, capacity and raw material planning. This paper presents a methodology to model the Aggregate Production Planning problem, which is combinatorial in nature, when optimized with Genetic Algorithms. This is done considering a multitude of constraints of contradictory nature and the optimization criterion - overall cost, made up of costs with production, work force, inventory, and subcontracting. A case study of substantial size, used to develop the model, is presented, along with the genetic operators.