Developing a model for integrating process planning and production planning and control in cellular manufacturing

Organizations willing to succeed in global competition have to integrate their internal and external processes. This specially includes planning and production control (PPC) processes. Optimized allocation of the production resources and quick response to demand change results in lower cost and improvement of production performance. Practitioners and researches have been trying to achieve these goals using production planning techniques. Although the results are significant, it seems necessary to integrate production operations in order to improve the production performance. Designing an efficient PPC system and integrating it with process planning in a cellular environment is of the same importance. The goals, information and decisions taken in production planning and control and process planning are often very different and difficult to integrate. In this paper, firstly the latest production planning framework in cellular manufacturing has been reviewed and modified. This framework has been customized to meet requirements and constraints of the Iran electronics industries. The application of the models has been considered as a case study for a production system in electronics and telecommunication sector in a plant in Iran. The validity of the presented model has been tested by the experts of several sections of the plant, studied as the case.