Research on agent-based heuristic production planning of product mix considering build-to-order

For the uncertainty of demand, many enterprises have adopted the production planning of Build-To-Order (BTO). If demand in the order exceeds the enterprise's production capacity, the product mix decision should be made for achieving the optimized production level that makes the maximized profit. In a semi-discrete manufacturer that adopts BTO, integrating Agent, the paper built a distributed production decision model based on activity processes and the Bill of Materials (BOM). The model is independent of the specific formation of cost and profit function. A heuristic algorithm has been proposed to solve the model, which is based on Particle Swarm Optimizer (PSO). And the algorithm uses one dimension search to adjust the flying velocity coefficients of particles to control particles not to fly out of the search space. Numeric examples research demonstrates that the algorithm is effective. For applying the model in a real ERP system, a testing prototype has been developed and a simulating decision was made. The results show that the decision model and the algorithm are feasible.