Order release in production planning and control systems: challenges and opportunities.

Production planning and control (PPC) systems are important to the competitiveness of manufacturing firms and their ability to benefit from recent technological advances. We give an overview of research and unsolved research questions in PPC systems related to the order release function that sets output targets for autonomous production units that manage production at the shop-floor level. We describe the hierarchical Manufacturing Planning and Control (MPC) and Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) architectures for PPC systems prevalent in practice and the positioning of the order release task within these frameworks. We then describe the research streams relevant to order release, optimisation models for order release planning, and the relation of these models to the overall PPC system. Modelling the dynamic response of production units to time-varying work input, which represents an extension of classical production theory by incorporating the time dimension, is identified as the major modelling challenge. We conclude by suggesting several unsolved research questions that should encourage researchers to work on this topic which is far from mature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]