CHAOS IN PRODUCTION PLANNING

A phenomenon which is seen in some of the manufacturing systems and production planning is chaos and the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect points out that in case of the presence of nonlinear relations in system and incorrect estimation of initial values of variables, the error in the estimates of system state will be intensified, and after a while there will be a large distance between available state of system and reality. Using mathematical means and computer simulation, we have tried to demonstrate that in a production system the numerical combination of Cycle Time (CT), Adjustment Time between existing and desired Work In Progress (WIP), and Adjustment Time between current and desired inventory can lead to chaos and butterfly effect in the behavior of the inventory state variable. Our paper concludes with a discussion of a hypothesis that emerged from this research.