Production Planning with Load Dependent Lead Times: An Update of Research

Lead times impact the performance of the supply chain significantly. Although there is a large body of literature concerning queuing models for the analysis of the relationship between capacity utilization and lead times, and another body of work on control and order release policies that take lead times into consideration, there have been relatively few aggregate planning models that recognize the (nonlinear) relationship between the planned utilization of capacity and lead times. In this paper we provide an in-depth discussion of the state-of-the art in this area, with particular attention to those models that are appropriate at the aggregate planning level.