In this project, the general topic of production planning is addressed whereby improvements
concerning the integration of constrained resources are the main focus. Production planning can be
split into long term, medium term and short term planning. On the long term planning level,
decisions related to resource investments (e.g. invest in a new machine or not), workforce (e.g. how
many new workers to hire), and approximate sales are taken. The main results of medium term
planning are production orders that specify for each material how many pieces to produce, when to
start production, and at what date the order should be finished. In short term planning, the sequence
of orders is decided (e.g. the next order to be produced after finishing the current order is defined
for each machine) and additional short term workforce capacity is provided if necessary. In practice,
in medium term production planning a number of simplifications are usually made. Among these are
the assumptions that lead times as well as demand are known with certainty and that resource
limitations can be ignored. Since production resources, such as machines or workers, are usually
limited and lead times as well as the actual demand are rarely known with certainty, we focus in this
project on the medium term planning level and develop methods to better integrate capacity
restrictions and parameter uncertainty into the respective planning models. The aim is to obtain
production plans which better fit to the current shop floor situation, concerning available resource
capacity and currently processed orders on the shop floor. This will lead to a better performance of
the production system with respect to inventory needed and service level provided to the customers.