An exact method to assembly end products from a stock of semi-finished products

Abstract Looking for ways to stay competitive in the global marketplace, the firm has to find a system that offers an effective mean for achieving a high degree of product variety and quick product delivery, which is possible by assemble to order policy. In such policy only components or semi-finished products ( SFP) inventories are kept. The number of reference of SFP to be stored as well as the determination of the composition of this stock have a direct impact on the delivery time (the time of assembly). Therefore, it is necessary to assess the performance of a stock composition. The main objective of this paper is to provide a method to evaluate the number of assembly operations necessary to provide the end products from a given stock composition.