Fuzzy approach for production planning and detailed scheduling in paints manufacturing

Due to growing competition, small- and medium-sized companies face within supply chains the challenge of providing short and reliable throughput times while coping with uncertainties, especially concerning time parameters, in production planning and detailed scheduling. The application of fuzzy scheduling is an adequate way to model these uncertainties in a supply chain. The paper presents an approach for the fuzzy scheduling of hybrid flow shops based on the general multi-mode resource-constrained project-scheduling problem. The approach is validated in a case study of a small- and medium-sized enterprise producing paints in a batch production process.