Soft computing based procurement planning of time-variable demand in manufacturing systems

Procurement planning with discrete time varying demand is an important problem in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). It can be described using the non-analytic mathematical programming model proposed in this paper. To solve the model we propose to use a fuzzy decision embedded genetic algorithm. The algorithm adopts an order strategy selection to simplify the original real optimization problem into binary ones. Then, a fuzzy decision quantification method is used to quantify experience from planning experts. Thus, decision rules can easily be embedded in the computation of genetic operations. This approach is applied to purchase planning problem in a practical machine tool works, where satisfactory results have been achieved.