Tactical and Operational Issues in a Hybrid MTO-MTS Production Environment: The Case of Food Production

Abstract

Hybrid production environments that combine MTO and MTS strategies have emerged to enable production systems to better respond to changes in consumer and market demand. This paper discusses some of the tactical and operational production planning and control (PPC) issues involved in such hybrid production environments, using the food industry as an illustrative case. The discussion identifies MRP combined with WLC as a promising approach for incorporating MTO items into an MRP planning environment on the tactical and operational levels. Additional techniques are required to incorporate uncertainty and provide flexibility in this particular context and these should be further investigated taking different food supply chain characteristics into consideration.