Analysis of Approximate Planning Horizons

制造商通常根据实际收到的订单以及未来几周的预测订单来计划生产进度，并假设在计划期限结束之前不会有新订单。一个关键问题是确定这一规划范围的长度。较短的计划期限通常会导致决策者无法获得重要的未来信息，因此进度计划的成本比信息更多的情况下更高。另一方面，在较长的规划范围内预测需求和调度也是昂贵的，并且难以准确地执行。因此，需要在这两个极端之间取得平衡。这项建议旨在研究规划期的长短如何影响进度表的质量。各种调度环境将被考虑，并制定方法，以建立一个合适的长度规划的地平线，产生所需的准确性的时间表。

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.