A stochastic linear programming approach to hierarchical production planning

This paper examines production planning decisions. The process is formulated as a hierarchical production planning (HPP) model under uncertain demand. A review of HPP articles indicates that while current models do consider uncertainty as a part of their solution methods, a deficiency persists since these models fail to incorporate the uncertain demand explicitly in the formulation of the problem. A stochastic linear programming model (SLP) is proposed to better reflect reality and to provide a superior solution. The model remains computationally tractable despite the precise incorporation of uncertainty and the imposition of penalties when constraints are violated. A problem is introduced which illustrates the superiority of the proposed model over those currently being applied.