ABSTRACT
OPT is a manufacturing management strategy which has been developed in more recent years. It has been less widely adopted than either Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II), or Just-In-Time (JIT), however it shares many of the features of both the alternative strategies. In particular it shares with JIT the requirement to synchronise the manufacturing activities and to concentrate on issues such as quality, leadtimes, lot sizing and machine set-up times to ensure the optimisation
of the manufacturing resource. In common with the use of MRP II to manage more complex manufacturing systems, the adoption of an OPT strategy involving software support requires a large, and often complex data base of product and machine information to enable meaningful scheduling calculations to take place. More recent research has suggested that OPT given the many complementary characteristics that it shares is potentially the most beneficial of all three manufacturing strategies, Lawrence (1990).
