Analysis of Approximate Planning Horizons

制造商通常根据实际收到的订单和未来几周的预测订单来计划生产计划，假设在计划范围结束之前不会有新订单。一个关键问题是确定这个规划范围的长度。较短的规划周期通常会导致决策者无法获得重要的未来信息，因此，与更多的信息可用相比，计划的成本更高。另一方面，在较长的规划范围内预测需求和调度也是昂贵且难以准确执行的。因此，需要在这两个极端之间保持平衡。本提案旨在研究规划视界的长度如何影响时间表的质量。将考虑各种调度环境，并开发用于建立适当长度规划范围的方法，以产生所需精度的调度。

Manufacturers typically plan a production schedule on the basis of actual orders received together with orders that are forecasted for the next few weeks, on the assumption that there will be no new orders until the end of the planning horizon. A key issue is to determine a length for this planning horizon. A short planning horizon typically results in important future information being unavailable to the decision maker, and therefore schedules are more costly than if more information were available. On the other hand, forecasting demand and scheduling under a longer planning horizon is also costly and difficult to perform accurately. Therefore, a balance is required between these extremes. This proposal aims to study how the length of a planning horizon affects the quality of a schedule. Various scheduling environments will be considered, and methodologies developed for establishing a suitable length planning horizon that produces a schedule of the desired accuracy.