On the complexity of production planning and scheduling in the pharmaceutical industry: the Delivery Trade-offs Matrix

Abstract

The manufacturing of pharmaceutical products is preceded by complex development phases where process design, planning, and scheduling problems must be considered as deeply linked, fact that has not yet been adequately handled by the existing literature. In this perspective, this work discusses the role of the production planning and scheduling decisions in the pharmaceutical industry. It starts by analysing the main aspects that influence planning and scheduling, and defines an extended scope of the related problems, as a way to account for higher levels of integration between process design and operational decisions. We propose a novel conceptual representation, the Delivery Trade-offs Matrix (DTM) to help managing the trade-offs occurring in the drug development process and to expose the factors that affect the performance of these manufacturing systems.