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F. Kamhuber, T. Sobottka, B. Heinzl, W. Sihn:
"An Efficient Multi-Objective Hybrid Simheuristic Approach for Advanced Rolling Horizon Production Planning";
Talk: Winter Simulation Conference 2019 (WSC2019), Maryland, USA; 2019-12-08 - 2019-12-11; in: "Proceedings of the 2019 Winter Simulation Conference", (2019).

This contribution introduces an innovative holistic multi-objective simheuristic approach for advanced
production planning on rolling horizon basis for an European industrial food manufacturer. The
optimization combines an efficient heuristic mixed-integer optimization, followed by a customized
Simulated Annealing algorithm. State-of-the-Art multi-objective solution techniques fail to address highly
fluctuating demands in a suitable way. Due to the lack of modelling details, as well as dynamic constraints,
these methods are unable to adapt to seasonal (off-) peaks in demand and to consider resource adjustments.
Our approach features dynamic capacity and stock-level restrictions, which are evaluated by an integrated
simulation module, as well as a statistical explorative data analysis. In addition to a smoothed production,
mid-term stock levels, setup-costs and the expected utilization of downstream equipment are optimized
simultaneously. The results show a ~ 30 to 40% reduced output variation rate, thus yielding an equally
reduced requirement for downstream equipment.