Dual approach to the harmonized model between inventory reduction and heijyunka (production leveling) based on the minimum average-energy principle

A major issue in manufacturing is the low cost production and supply of products in response to variable demand while ensuring no sales opportunity is missed. In previous studies, many factors affecting production allocation, such as the number of workers and working hours, have been examined. In contrast, we have worked on the development of a new method to simply determine the production quantity "balanced (harmonized) between inventory reduction and heijyunka (production leveling)," based on the demand quantity and the inventory quantity. We have proposed a harmonized model of inventory reduction (lowering energy of inventory management) and production leveling (increasing entropy of production allocation) based on the "maximum entropy principle." In this study, we attempt a "dual approach" to exchange the objective function and the constraint to the harmonized model and propose a new model based on the "minimum average-energy principle." This enables multifaceted analysis of harmonized levels between production leveling and inventory reduction.