Final Report Summary - PPEXT (Industrial Extensions to Production Planning and Scheduling) This project brought together two EU beneficiaries: the University of the West of England (UWE) & the Faculty of Engineering of Porto University (FEUP), and three partners from Brazil: University of São Paulo (USP), Federal University of São Carlos (USFCar) & São Paulo State University (UNESP).The five institutions have just successfully completed a large three-year joint research programme on a major competitive issue for both the EU and Brazil, with a strong economical and environmental impact, namely, the optimization of production planning processes across several industries. The project exchanged research staff between the EU and Brazil with the aim of developing and testing industrial extensions to models and optimisation algorithms in production lot sizing, cutting and packing and scheduling in 6 industries: animal nutrition, beverages, glass, dairy products, textiles and furniture.The aim of the project has been to help industrial companies fully optimize short-to-medium term productivity in the most cost-effective manner by solving production planning and scheduling problems using an integrated and optimal approach. Many companies use mathematical models tohelp them do this, but these are often unrealistic and oblige managers to review and modify manually the plans suggested by planning systems in order to obtain feasible plans. Standard models have been refined and extended to effectively reflect reality. For this purpose, industrially-driven modelling extensions to these problems have been tackled for lot sizing and scheduling problems, as well as for cutting and packing problems. An aim has also been to develop and implement state-of-the-art efficient solution procedures.Fulfilling these aims, the following five objectives have been fulfilled, namely to: 1. Formulate industrial extensions to production planning models that can handle the complexities of specific industries; 2. Develop methods to solve the models formulated; 3. Test the models and solutions methods in the six selected industry areas in both the EU and Brazil; 4. Disseminate the results within EU and Brazilian academia, and promote the transfer of knowledge from academia to industries; 5. Transfer knowledge between the EU and Brazil.Overall, the project has shown that the new models and methods developed can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of production planning and scheduling in complex industrial settings. This was achieved by close cooperation between European and Brazilian researchers on both continents, working together over long secondments (particularly for young researchers at PhD level), making possible a sustained exchange of knowledge between the EU and Brazil, building on each other strengths. Fulfilling a further aim of the ERA, the project has strengthened research relationships between the EU and Brazil, and catalysed plans to continue our collaboration using similar methods in new areas of application, such as the scheduling of capacity and resources in health care.We have rigorously tested the models and methods using data obtained or adapted from actual companies. The results have been widely disseminated through numerous presentations at conferences on both the EU and Brazil, impacting on researchers in other EU countries, and initiating a specialist stream at the main annual European Operational Research conference. Brazilian and European researchers have then published these results in a good number of peer-reviewed articles in respected international scientific journals to ensure their dissemination to the broader international academic and industrial community.
