Considering distribution logistics in production sequencing: Problem definition and solution algorithm

The aim of production planning in the automotive industry is to terminate the production cycle for every order. Because modern OEM use mixed-model assembly lines (MMAL) a central task within this planning is the order sequencing (OS). It transforms an unsorted group of orders of a certain time period into an optimal sequence. Since the automotive industry is production dominated, the OS is mainly based on production related goals. Nevertheless, the sequence has a strong impact on performance of distribution logistics (DL) as well, which has the task to transport finished vehicles to logistic centres and dealers. Hence, in this paper we analyse if requirements from DL are already considered and if not can be considered in future OS. The paper is structured as follows. We start identifying requirements from production and DL that concern the OS, sum up results from a literature review in Section 2 and discover a shortcoming in the consideration of DL related requirements. Thus, in Section 4 we present the problem class Distribution-oriented Car Sequencing (DCS) as an extension of traditional Car Sequencing (CS). In Section 4, a solution algorithm for the new problem is outlined. Section 5 shows first results of a real world scenario, summarises the results and presents ideas for further research.