Consistency of the Disaggregation Process in Hierarchical Planning

This paper deals with the planning process of a manufacturing system in which the aggregation of products sharing similar characteristics leads to a hierarchical structure. It gives special attention to the consistency of decisions in a two-level structure, and presents necessary and sufficient conditions for consistency of a disaggregation procedure. Using a subset of these conditions improves upon the disaggregation procedure proposed by Bitran and Hax (Bitran, G. R., A. C. Hax. 1981. Disaggregation and resource allocation using convex knapsack problems with bounded variables. Mgmt. Sci.27 431–441.).