Modified production switching heuristics for aggregate production planning

The Production Switching Heuristic (PSH) developed by Mellichamp and Love [Management Science 24, 1242–1251] has been suggested as a more realistic, practical and intuitively appealing approach to aggregate production planning (APP). In this paper, the PSH has been modified to present a more sophisticated open grid search procedure for solving the APP problem. The effectiveness of this approach has been demonstrated by determining a near-optimal solution to the classic paint factory problem using a personal computer based application written in THINK PASCAL. The performance of the modified production switching heuristics is then compared in the context of the paint factory problem with results obtained by other prominent APP models including the linear decision rule, parametric production planning, and PSH to conclude that the modified PSH offers a better minimum cost solution than the original PSH model.