Aggregate production planning in a Turkish furniture company

The main obstacle that stands in the way to set up aggregate planning models in manufacturing firms is the complexity of the mathematical models. This study aims to show that simple and easy to use methods such as trial-and-error methods can be very practical when solved on spreadsheets. Then, linear programming and goal programming methods will be introduced to be able to catch up with the competitive and continuously developing business world. An application concerning Turkish furniture industry which is a very labour intensive sector with a highly seasonal demand will be conducted to demonstrate that very beneficial solutions can be achieved both using spreadsheet solvers and more developed softwares such as LINGO 8.0 and then the results will be compared. Also, it will be claimed that using hiring/firing strategies in a labour intensive industry would have a negative impact on the working personnel, so strategies like using overtime and subcontracting would be better ideas to apply in furniture industry. Keywords: Aggregate Planning, Trial-and-Error Method, Linear Programming, Goal Programming, Furniture Industry, Spreadsheet Solver