An available-to-promise system for TFT LCD manufacturing in supply chain

This paper presents development of an available-to-promise (ATP) system for thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) manufacturing in global supply chain environment where the worldwide headquarter, distribution centers, and manufacturing facilities are globally networked. ATP activity is simply to give the delivery date promise to customers for their specific orders. However, the ATP process is not simple due to the complexity of supply chain and information integrity. In this paper, we build up a global ATP system architecture whose functions and information flows are comprehensively defined. To do so, we developed an ATP model in a global supply chain for estimating the promising delivery date for new orders, and the capacity available-to-promise (CATP) model for calculating the unused production capacity at shop floor level with given production schedules. We proposed an efficient heuristic for scheduling TFT LCD module assembly process for effectively using the unused capacity at shop floor level. Efficiency of the scheduling system was investigated using the data collected in a real TFT LCD manufacturing site. The validity of the proposed ATP system was also explored by comparing with other ATP procedures including the current practice.