Component Commonality and Order Matching Rules in Make-to-Forecast Production

Make-to-forecast production is a way to realize high customization and fast responsiveness. This study firstly investigates the effect of introducing a common component in a make-to-forecast production environment. The common component can eliminate a modification step, which is a major cost component in make-to-forecast production. It is illustrated, however, that introducing a versatile component that merely covers several variants is unattractive, and thus adding values to the common component is inevitable in this environment. Secondly, an order-matching rule under the condition that two partially overlapped delivery lead time intervals exist is proposed. The rule considers the effect of matching orders to units that can cover both intervals. An alternative re-matching rule is also developed and examined. Numerical experiments clarify that the proposed rule generally realizes higher contribution ratio and lower percentages of orphans and rejected orders. The proposed re-matching rule increases the average contribution ratio at the expense of increased orphans and order rejections.