What is Backwards Scheduling

Global competition and changing customer requirements are putting major challenges in the production planning and control systems of manufacturing enterprises. Production planning and control requires robust methods able to cope with demand variability, processing times variability, routing sequences, resource availability, etc., between other sources of variation. Production planning and control significantly influences target performance criteria such as the delivery time, on-time delivery, work-in-process inventory, and resources utilization. Therefore, production planning and control is strategically important for the economic success of these enterprises and innovative production planning and control methods are required. This chapter describes how workload control, a leading production planning and control system for small- and medium-sized enterprises, operates and illustrates how it aids in shortening and stabilising throughput times based on a simulation study of a small made-to-order production system.