Abstract
Production facilities are critical components of the global economy and supply chain. Firms are forced to balance several competing objectives-from reducing operating costs by managing inventory to increasing profits by satisfying customer demand. The act of scheduling material through an interconnected production network is analytically challenging; therefore, stakeholders require statistical insights to strengthen the decision-making process. This inventory scheduling application allows decision-makers to monitor the status and impact of numerous production parameters while aiming to mitigate the propagation of schedule risk through the system. This work presents a material planning framework that (i) jointly represents work center and material relationships and (ii) integrates stochastic methods to assess potential risk. Using network flow optimization and Monte Carlo simulation, this work accommodates three primary considerations: (i) safety stock, and other inventory restrictions, (ii) multi-product order satisfaction, and (iii) costs derived from holding inventory and delaying orders. An illustrative example examines the impact of twelve experimental scenarios on order fulfillment, work center utilization, and material inventory and production.