| Abstract: | The costs of starting-up and shutting down production lines (and plants) in a process industry are often quite high. Therefore, when a plant's capacity significantly exceeds its forecast demand over an annual planning horizon, a manufacturer must either plan temporary production line shutdowns during the year, or plan to temporarily idle production lines without formally shutting line(s) down. The trade-offs between these two strategies can be complex. In this paper, we propose a methodology to evaluate the impact of both strategies on a plant's production costs by developing an analytical model based on the authors' experience with several process industries. |
