Essays on the effects of schedule stability in production planning

Stabilization of production schedules is a common practice in manufacturing planning and control. Although research has addressed the scheduling problem from many different angles, no existing works specifically address the optimization of production scheduling in the presence of a frozen planning horizon. Existing literature either ignores frozen horizons or examines the impact of a frozen horizon on factors such as schedule nervousness, inventory costs, or customer service.;This research takes three approaches to investigate the costs and benefits that schedule stability, driven by policies such as a frozen horizon, convey to scheduling systems. First, the impact of procedural stability is empirically studied in an examination of the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and firm performance. This study shows the impact that both schedule stability and cultural factors have on this critical relationship. Schedule stability is found to act as a moderating variable, while geographical location (serving as a proxy for culture variables) is found to be an important control variable. Next, analytical models of both a two-period newsvendor problem and a more complex rolling-horizon scheduling system show the importance of the frozen horizon by highlighting conditions where violations of the frozen horizon policy do (and don't) improve overall performance. Finally, results of a meta-analytical study identify significant relationships between the length of the frozen horizon and performance variables such as schedule stability, inventory investment, and total system costs.