The book is concerned with production planning problems arising in the context of make-to-order assembly. After introducing the general decision context, a survey of the relevant literature in the fields of assembly management, make-to-order manufacturing, and project scheduling is given. The main part of the book provides a hierarchical planning approach with three levels: order selection, manufacturing planning, and operations scheduling. The decision problem of each level is carefully elaborated and stated in terms of a mathematical programme. Suited solution procedures such as list scheduling, tabu search, and linear programming are proposed and experimentally tested.

Purchasing .Fabrication Assembly Distribution Figure 1.1: Multi-Level Manufacturing System for Make-to-Order Products specific resources of a type, i.e., a certain machine or a single worker, the determination of the sequence operations are processed on a ma chine, and the assignment of start and finish times to operations. We will modify this framework to be specifically suited for multi level make-to-order manufacturing systems. We assume that the facil ity design issue is settled, i.e., the location and the layout of the facility as well as the capacity ofthe three main resource types of the company are determined. These resource types are the engineering department, the fabrication department, and the assembly department. The engineering department is concerned with the construction of new products as well as the modification and customization of ex isting products. This entails the generation of engineering documents such as blue prints for manufacturing. The capacity of the engineering department is determined by the the count and qualification of engi neers and by the availability of construction devices such as computer aided design (CAD) systems etc."

This book is the result of my research perfonned at the University Kiel under the supervision of Professor Dr. Andreas Drexl. I am very grateful to him for suggesting the subject as well as for his guidance and support during the preparation. Professor Dr. Klaus Brockhoff deserves thanks for under- taking the task of the secondary assessment. The Institut fur Betriebswirtschaftslehre in Kiel and especially my col- leagues Dr. Knut Haase, Carsten Jordan, AlfKimrns, and Dr. Frank Salewski provided a stimulating environment. Particularly, I am indebted to Dr. Arno Sprecher and Andreas Schinner. The results of Chapter 2 and 3, respectively, are outcome of joint research with Arno; Andreas proof-read the entire manuscript. Furthennore, I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Erik Demeulemeester, Prof Dr. James H. Patterson, Prof Dr. Roman Slowinski, and Prof Dr. Ramon Alvarez-Valdes for the valuable help they provided with suggestions, papers, and computer programs. I, As to the technical realisation of this book, lowe thanks to Reimer Karlsen for coding and impl~menting parts of the algorithms, to Marc Schumann for drawing all figures, to Ina Kantowski who looked after the literature, and to Uwe Penke for providing a ready-to-use computer-laboratory. The gratitude that I feel towards my family requires no further comments.