Mass-customization

This project concerns design and testing of a new algorithm in scehduling in a typical assembly-job-shop environment. Deterministic as well as stochastic demand scenarios for products is considered. The products share certain sub-assemblies in their BOM among themselves. The objective is to minimize production cost and inventory loss. A novel methodology, ATO-CS-hybrid, is proposed and its performance is compared with the three commonly practiced methodologies, MTO, MTS and ATO. As such, two integer models are formulated, model ATO-CS-hybrid-D and model ATO-CS-hybrid-S for the current methodology. The results show that ATO-CS-hybrid is superior to the other methodologies. This is an important and useful contribution in the direction of developing scheduling algorithms for attainment of a fully funcitonal Mass-Customization system. Mass customization can be briefly descibed as a paradigm/system in which manufacturers like to strike a trade-off between offering the customers customization and diversification in their products v/s the costs associated with it.