Dear Experts,
We are designing a solutio for a foods processing industry which has mainly 2 constraints referred to the planning, the main one is the flavours: some lines can process up to 6 different flavours and some are mixed among them so we have several combinations. Changes between this combinations take a lot of time.
P.e: Fish, Fish Egg, Fish Synap, Fish Egg Synap, Fish Egg Synap Milk, Fish TomatoPure,Crab,Fish Crab.
Moreover, there are 4 different glass containers which should also be considered during planning: Small, Small Medium, Medium Big and Big.
Because of health considerations - allergens poising; flavours are the main constraint to be considered for planning however the glass containers sizes need to be also considered as they produce by "blocks". First Small, then Big and so on...
I was planning to model the flavours as setup groups and run a setup optimization or a scheduling sequence heuristic by setup groups. Then, regarding the glass containers size, I was doubting between modelling them as setup keys or using block planning.
I have my doubts between setup optimization or sequencing and afterwards block planning. On the other hand, I am a little bit afraid to use so setup groups and setup keys due to the high number of combinations.
Which option do you think it is better and Why? Any other suggestion?
Thanks in advance
Carlos