Production instruction volume decision support method and program therefor

• US 20030167146A1
• Filed: 02/25/2003
• Published: 09/04/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi Tohoku Software Limited
• Original Assignee: Hitachi Tohoku Software Limited
• Inventors: Tezuka, Masaru, Hiji, Masahiro
• Granted Patent: US 6,714,889 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/129
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders

Abstract

A production instruction volume decision support method comprising the steps of: creating a plurality of sets of amount of the production order; obtaining a plurality of evaluation values based on simulation of demand for each product; obtaining a superiority relationship among the sets of amount of the production order from the evaluation values; creating a new set of amount of the production order from two sets of amount of the production order which are superior to the other sets of amount of the production order; repeating the above steps a predetermined number of times to obtain solutions to the plurality of sets of amount of the production order which have been optimized; displaying a plurality of sets of amount of the production order which have nothing superior thereto; and enabling a user to select one of them according to his/her management policy.

Claims

1. A production instruction volume decision support method comprising the steps of:

creating a plurality of sets of amount of the production order having information for specifying the production volumes of a plurality of products;

simulating demand for each product from demand forecast information for each product;

computing evaluation values of a plurality of evaluation indices from demand for each product and the production volume of each product for each set of amount of the production order;

computing sets of amount of the production order which are inferior to other sets of amount of the production order in some evaluation indices but superior to the other sets of amount of the production order in the other evaluation indices to output a plurality of sets of amount of the production order; and

displaying the output plurality of sets of amount of the production order so that a user can select one of them.

2. The production instruction volume decision support method according to claim 1, wherein said demand forecast information for each product is obtained by computing a probability distribution of profit in computation of an evaluation value using a probability distribution of demand forecast.

3. The production instruction volume decision support method of claim 1, wherein the computation of evaluation values of the plurality of evaluation indices is computation of a risk minimization evaluation value as an evaluation index for minimization of risk and a profit maximization evaluation value as an evaluation index for maximization of profit.

4. The production instruction volume decision support method according to claim 2, wherein the computation of evaluation values of said plurality of evaluation indices is computation of probability values of risk and profit from the probability distribution of profit.

5. The production instruction volume decision support method according to claim 3, wherein said computation of the risk minimization evaluation value is computation of a probability of obtaining a minus profit and said computation of the profit maximization evaluation value is computation of a profit value obtained at a probability of a certain value or more.

6. The production instruction volume decision support method according to claim 3, wherein said computation of the profit maximization evaluation value is computation of profit using at least one of sales unit price information, production cost information, inventory cost information and initial inventory information for each product and opportunity loss calculation coefficient information for computing lost sales opportunities due to a shortage of supply despite demand into an amount of money.

7. The production instruction volume decision support method according to claim 1, wherein creation of said plurality of sets of amount of the production order is computation of the sets of amount of the production order of products using production resource capacity information and production resource consumption information on consumption of resources for production of each product so that total consumption of production resources for the production of all the products does not exceed production resource capacity.

8. The production instruction volume decision support method according to claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of sets of amount of the production order is displayed as one mark on a graph showing said evaluation indices, and selection means for selecting one of said plurality of sets of amount of the production order are displayed.

9. A production instruction volume decision support method comprising the steps of:

creating a plurality of sets of amount of the production order;

obtaining a plurality of evaluation values based on simulation of demand for each product;

obtaining a superiority relationship among the sets of amount of the production order from the evaluation values;

creating a new set of amount of the production order from two sets of amount of the production order which are superior to the other sets of amount of the production order;

repeating the above steps a predetermined number of times to obtain solutions to the plurality of sets of amount of the production order which have been optimized;

displaying a plurality of sets of amount of the production order which have nothing superior thereto; and

displaying means for enabling a user to select one of them.

10. A production instruction volume decision support program for enabling a computer for support decision on amount of the production order of products to function as:

means for creating a plurality of sets of amount of the production order having information for specifying production volumes of a plurality of products;

means for simulating demand for each product from demand forecast information of each product;

means for computing evaluation values of a plurality of evaluation indices from demand for each product and the production volume of each product for each set of amount of the production order;

means for computing sets of amount of the production order which are inferior to other sets of amount of the production order in some evaluation indices but superior to the other sets of amount of the production order in the other evaluation indices to output a plurality of sets of amount of the production order; and

means for displaying the output plurality of sets of amount of the production order so that a user can select one of them.