Production planning and control -PPS- with the pull-principle and integrated bottle-neck-management

In most companies with multi-stage flow-shop-production, assembly order planning is directly linked to actual market demand. This PULL-principle commonly is not used for planning the previous levels of the parts production. The paper deals with reasons and consequences which result from the lack of synchronization between both planning levels. It is demonstrated that availability checks, short-term order release and order sequencing cannot close the gap between PUSH- and PULL-levels; operative bottle-neck-management leads to negative economical results. A PPS-system is presented, which leads to a significant lead-time-reproduction by using the Pull-principle for all production planning levels. The simultaneous material and capacity planning approach is used to realize a step-by-step-synchronization. While pulling stocks by demand, temporary bottle-necks might occur. A new inventory-oriented method is presented for an integrated feed-back of material and capacity bottle-necks by reorder ing/rescheduling the followeing levels in the material flow direction. The practicability of the system has been tested in an automative production.