Aggregate Production Planning: Modeling and Solution via Excel Spreadsheet and Solver

Aggregate production planning problems are found in an intermediate level of a hierarchical decision process. They are used to anticipate managerial strategies related to the future use of resources of the company. Optimal plans and production scenarios can be provided by solving mathematical models, which are formulated to represent these problems. This paper introduces a managerial decision support system, based on Excel spreadsheet, to deal with aggregate production planning problem. Some computational features of this tool are presented. A case from literature is used as an example to illustrate other aspects of the tool.