Scheduling Dell

The recent issue of Interfaces has an interesting article about production scheduling at one of Dell's computer assembly plants. The article, which focuses on kitting (collecting the parts needed for each customer order), not only presents the mathematical formulation of the problem but also discusses the production scheduling process. I found it interesting that changing the objective function was a difficult culture change for the Dell employees. They were used to balancing the load, making sure that different kitting lines had approximately equal workloads. The new management objective was to reduce the number of setups, which was set to increase dramatically due to other changes in their operations. So showing the employees how the new algorithms would not impact load balancing was key to getting them to accept the new procedures.

If I ever get around to a second edition of the Handbook of Production Scheduling, this would be a good story to include.