Evaluating order acceptance policies for divergent production systems with co-production.

Summary The impacts of using different order acceptance policiesin manufacturing sectors are usually well known and documented in the literature. However, for industries facing divergentprocesses with co-production (i.e. several products produced at the same time from a common raw material),the evaluation, comparison, and selection of policiesare not trivial tasks. This paperproposesa framework to enable this evaluation. Using a simulation model that integrates a custom-builtERP, we compare and evaluate different order acceptance policiesin various market conditions. Experiments are carried outusing a case from the forestproducts industry. Results illustrate how and when different market conditions related to divergent/co-production industries may call for Available-To-Promise (ATP), Capable-To-Promise (CTP),and other known strategies. Especially, we show that advanced order acceptance policies like CTP may generate a better income for certain types of market and, conversely to typical manufacturing industries, ATP performs better than other strategies for a specific demand patterns.