Design of a Production Planning System in a Pharmaceutical Factory: Spreadsheet Model and Case Study

Purpose This work focuses on developing a production planning tool for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in pharmaceutical manufacturing to achieve service levels that can meet their needs under highly competitive market conditions and fluctuating demand with efficiently and reasonable production costs. And, the tool is developed with the requirements of the general characteristics and constraints of industries. Methods The proposed tool is developed on a spreadsheet-based model that includes decisions to determine production and sequence orders to manage inventory levels. The production plans are simulated with actual data for 9 months. The results are then compared with the as-is method in terms of the service level and inventory level. Results The computational experiment shows that the service level has improved to 100% as targeted without additional inventory cost and capacity. In addition, it can improve the efficiency of planners with an easy-to-implement automation tool yielding less planning time and more agility to unexpected changes. Conclusions The model aims to improve the service level and operational efficiency of the case study. And, it is a practical approach for production planning in SMEs with limited on investment and expertise. It also has potential to be extended to high efficiency production planning systems.