Computers & Industrial Engineering 163 (2022) 107856

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Computers & Industrial Engineering

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Production planning method for seru production systems under

demand uncertainty
Yuya Fujita a, *, Kazuhiro Izui a, Shinji Nishiwaki a, Zhe Zhang b, Yong Yin c
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto daigaku-katsura, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 615-8530, Japan
b
School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, PR China
c
Graduate School of Business, Doshisha University, Karasuma-Imadegawa, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto 602-8580, Japan

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The seru production system is a new-type manufacturing system arising from Japanese production practices that
Seru loading can simultaneously achieve high efficiency, flexibility, and responsiveness. In this paper, a worker and pro­
Production planning duction quantity allocation optimization method for multi-product seru production systems under demand un­
certainty is proposed. To handle such demand uncertainty, the Monte Carlo technique is employed and the
optimization problem is formulated as a bi-level mixed-integer linear programming problem. At the first step, a
worker allocation problem is solved before demand realization is observed. As the second optimization step, the
production quantity allocation is then conducted based on the observed demand realization. The proposed
method is applied to several numerical problems to illustrate its effectiveness.

1. Introduction
Recently, since the product life cycle is getting remarkably shorter
and customer demand is diversing, a manufacturing system must be
constructed adopting high-mix low-volume production (Kaku, 2017;
Yin, Stecke, & Li, 2018). In such a fluctuating environment, traditional
line production, which is suitable for low-mix high-volume, can no
longer be adaptable to such unstable market demand. Therefore, the
“Seru production system” has attracted attention and been adopted,
especially among the electronics product manufacturers (Kaku, 2016;
Villa & Taurino, 2013; Yin et al., 2018).
The seru production system is a flexible production system which
evolved as an alternative to lean system approaches. The production
system consists of many assembly units called “seru.” In each seru unit,
only one or a few workers are in charge of multiple manufacturing tasks
to fabricate a full product or complete assembly. Since each seru unit is
composed to be simple and compact, seru production systems are easy to
reconfigure and have high ability to adapt to demand fluctuation. This
production system can conduct high-mix production by changing the
products to be manufactured for each seru. Furthermore, since each seru
unit is simple and compact, a seru production system can be recon­
structed very quickly. Owing to the above features, this production sys­
tem can adjust the type and quantity of products easily and swiftly. In
addition, this system can reduce the inventory of work-in-process and
finished products, the workforce, lead time, setup time, and shop floor
space, resulting in improved productivity (Sakazume, 2005, 2012;
Stecke, Yin, Kaku, & Murase, 2012). Consequently, the seru production
system is suitable for the environment in which the demand changes
frequently (Yin et al., 2018). Since the first introduction of the seru
production system by SONY in 1992, it has been adopted by major
electronic companies and has brought great benefits (Liu, Stecke, Lian, &
Yin, 2014; Stecke et al., 2012; Yin et al., 2018; Yin, Stecke, Swink, &
Kaku, 2017). Due to its practicality, various studies to obtain optimal
configurations of the seru production system have already been con­
ducted. Aboelfotoh and Md Abdullah (2018) studied the relationship
between the worker skill level of each task and the advisable
manufacturing strategy, either seru or assembly line. Süer, Ulutas, Kaku,
and Yin (2019) proposed to take the product life cycle stage and worker
skill level variation into consideration in constructing a seru production
system. Liu, Li, Lian, and Yin (2012) developed a mathematical model
where the assembly line is reconfigured to a seru-line combined or pure
seru system to optimize the number of serus and worker allocation aiming
to minimize the makespan. Furthermore, they presented an application
of the model in an industrial case. Yılmaz (2020) addressed the workforce
scheduling problem aiming to minimize the makespan taking worker
transfer between serus into account using a GA-based algorithm.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: fujita.yuya.j20@kyoto-u.jp (Y. Fujita).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2021.107856
Received 12 February 2021; Received in revised form 16 October 2021; Accepted 26 November 2021
Available online 2 December 2021
0360-8352/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Y. Fujita et al.
Furthermore, since multiple design criteria should be considered in the
early design phase of the manufacturing system, multiobjective optimi­
zation techniques have been also developed for seru configuration
problems. Liu et al. (2013) studied a multi-objective optimization tech­
nique for worker allocation and training planning problem using a heu­
ristic algorithm aiming to minimize the total training cost and to balance
the processing time of workers in each seru. Yu, Tang, Gong, Yin, and
Kaku (2014) proposed the optimization technique of the number of serus,
worker-to-seru allocation, and batch-to-seru allocation for minimizing
total labor hours and total throughput time using an NSGA-II based al­
gorithm. Yu, Wang, Ma, and Sun (2018) formulated the worker allocation
and loading problem to balance workload among all workers and among
all serus as a bi-objective optimization problem and solved it using an
improved exact algorithm. Lian, Liu, Li, and Yin (2018) studied a bi-
objective optimization problem to balance workload among all workers
and among all serus using NSGA-II taking workers’ skill sets and profi­
ciency levels into consideration. Yu, Tang, Sun, Yin, and Kaku (2013)
presented a multi-objective line-cell conversion model with two objective
functions, reducing the number of workers and minimizing the total
throughput time, and provided an improved exact algorithm for small-
scale problems to obtain Pareto-optimal solutions.
As discussed above, a seru production system is a flexible
manufacturing system and effective in the fluctuating environment. In
addition, since the demand is stochastic in practice (Abolghasemi, Beh,
Tarr, & Gerlach, 2020; Güler & Bilgiç, 2009), consideration of uncer­
tainty is very important to build a production system considering the
stochastic characteristic (Wang & Tang, 2018). Many reports which
considered uncertainty in various stages of decision making in the design
of manufacturing systems have been published (Gabrel, Murat, & Thiele,
2014), and demand uncertainty is one of the most important topics of
robust optimization. For examples, recently, Hu and Hu (2018) discussed
a stochastic programming technique for lot-sizing and scheduling prob­
lems where demand is a random variable. Thevenin, Adulyasak, and
Cordeau (2020) proposed optimal material requirement planning which
can handle uncertain demands. Mondal and Roy (2021) and Tolooie,
Maity, and Sinha (2020) handled mixed uncertainty including demand in
supply chain design. Chen, Xu, Zou, Peng, & Li, 2021; Xu, Hao, & Zheng,
2020 and Sun, Wang, and Xue (2021) formulated multiobjective robust
optimization problems under uncertain environments. However, there
are few reports for seru production planning under demand uncertainty
that discuss worker and production quantity allocation, which are the
most important decision variables in seru production.
Therefore, the aim of this study is to propose the method to obtain
optimal worker and production quantity allocation under the demand
uncertainty environment. In order to consider such uncertainty in the
optimization problem, a Monte Carlo approach is utilized and the
decision-making process is formulated as a bi-level optimization prob­
lem. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 de­
scribes the concept of the seru production system and, in Section 3, a
mathematical model for a worker and production quantity allocation
problem under demand uncertainty is constructed. Then, we formulate
this design problem of a seru production system as bi-level optimization
problems. The first optimization problem is to determine a worker allo­
cation problem and is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming
problem, while the second problem is formulated to obtain optimal
production quantity. In Section 4, the optimization scheme is applied to a
numerical example to illustrate its validity through parameter studies.
2. Production planning in Seru production systems
Seru production systems can be classified into three types: divisional
seru, rotating seru, and yatai (Stecke et al., 2012). Among them, rotating
seru can adapt swiftly for the volatile demand by adjusting the number of
workers in each seru (Iwamuro, 2002), and we focus on a design problem
in rotating seru in this paper. In rotating seru, workers who are allocated
to a seru unit perform all kinds of tasks in the seru, and the production
2
Computers & Industrial Engineering 163 (2022) 107856
yield of each seru is almost proportional to the number of assigned
workers. Therefore, the number of workers and the production quantity
allocated to each seru unit are the most important decision variables
when constructing seru production systems.
In this paper, we consider a design problem of a seru production
system for multi-generation series products as shown in Fig. 1 where
“downward substitution” structure (Hsu & Bassok, 1999) is assumed. In
this assumption, newest generation products are assembled in the seru
labeled with the greatest number. High-skilled workers are allocated to
older serus labeled with a smaller number and can assemble products of
multiple generations. Meanwhile, novice workers in new serus labeled
with a greater number can only assemble smaller kinds of product
generations. Such implementation of a seru production system can be
often observed in automobile suppliers.
All serus are assumed to have existing workers who were allocated to
each seru in a previous production period, and these workers can move
to a new seru. Also, new additional workers can be allocated to serus via a
certain training process. Consequently, in this design problem, the
number of moved workers and new additional workers must be deter­
mined. Furthermore, the production quantity in each seru is also a de­
cision variable.
This paper considers a seru production system for a build-to-order
production scheme, and Fig. 2 shows the decision flow for this pro­
duction. First, only worker allocation is determined taking the variation
of demand into consideration before the realization is observed, since
training of workers must be completed by the start of production. Next,
the demand realization is observed, and production quantity allocation
is determined. Then, the production is conducted along the determined
plan. Therefore, the optimization method proposed in this paper consists
of two stages: (1) worker allocation optimization stage and (2) pro­
duction quantity allocation stage. Since the first optimization stage must
be conducted before demand realization is observed, an optimization
problem must be formulated considering such demand uncertainty.
3. Mathematical model and optimization method
3.1. Notation
Definition of notation used in this paper is as follows.
Indexes:
i, k index of seru
j index of product generation
Integer decision variables:
pik the number of workers reallocated from seru k to i (integer)
qi the number of additional workers to seru i (integer)
Continuous decision variables:
Amij the quantities ofproduct in j − th generation allocated to seru i in scenario m
zmij the shortage of product in j − th generation allocated to seru i in scenario m
Variables, functions and parameters:
Dj demand for product in j − th generation
dj demand realization for product in j − th generation
f (d) joint probability distribution function of demand d = (d1, d2, …, dN)
wi the number of workers allocated to seru i after reallocation
Wi the upper limit of worker number in seru i
w′i the original number of workers allocated to seru i
tri , sali training cost and salary per worker in seru i
cj , sj , rj production cost, shortage cost and revenue of generation j per unit
ui the yield per worker in seru i
M the number of Monte Carlo samples
N the number of serus and product generations
Y. Fujita et al. Computers & Industrial Engineering 163 (2022) 107856

Fig. 1. Full downward substitution model.

Fig. 2. The optimization flow of the proposed method.

3.2. Assumptions is known, the worker allocation optimization problem can be formulated
as follows,
The following assumptions are considered in this paper to construct { }
∑N ∑ N ∑N ∑N
the mathematical model for the seru production planning problem: Maximize F = − (tri − trk )pik + tri qi − sali wi
(1)
pik ,qi ,Aij ,zij
i=1 k=i i=1 i=1
∫
1. The seru production system meets the features of full downward
+ G(d, w)f (d) dd
substitution, i.e. the workers in seru i can only produce the product
generations j which satisfies i⩽j.
2. The worker allocation is determined before the demand is observed where the objective function F(w) is the expected value of the total
while the product quantity allocation is determined after the demand profit, and w = (w1 ,w2 ,…,wN ). The first term is the total training cost of
is observed. workers and the second term is total wage where (tri − trk ) is training
3. The yield in each seru is proportional to the number of allocated cost required for a worker who moves from seru i to seru k (i > k) to
workers. obtain the skill for assembling product generations k, k + 1, ⋯, i − 1.
4. The demand of products for all generations are random variables, These two terms are not affected by the realization values d, and are
and their joint probability distribution functions are known. decided by only the worker allocation. G in the third term is the
5. Total allocated product quantity for each generation is equivalent to maximum total profit except for the training cost and wage at a certain d,
the observed demand realization. w, and the optimization problem to determine G(d, w) can be formulated
6. There are initially w′i workers allocated in each seru. These workers as follows,
and new additional workers are allocated to each seru after requisite (
j
) (
j
)
∑
N ∑
N ∑ ∑N ∑
minimum training. Since allocation to serus with smaller numbers G(d, w) = maxAij ,zij rj dj − cj Aij − sj zij (2)
requires much training cost, it is assumed that the initially allocated j=1 j=1 i=1 j=1 i=1

workers can be reallocated to seru i′ where i′ ⩽i is satisfied, in order to

restrain total training cost.
3.3. Formulation
As mentioned in Section 2, the optimization procedure consists of
two steps.
3.3.1. Worker allocation
The first step is to solve the worker allocation problem where
product demand uncertainty is taken into account in the formulation,
and handle it as random variables. Since the probability distribution Dj
where “max” is a function to obtain maximum value with respect to Aij
and zij . The first term in Eq. (2) is the total revenue when all the demand
is completely satisfied, and the second and third terms represent the
total production cost and shortage cost, respectively. Note that, in this
mathematical model, production yield realization cannot always satisfy
observed demand and product shortage may occur since the demand
realization is observed only after the worker allocation phase. Consid­
ering such a situation, product shortage zij is introduced as additional
variables in this formulation.
To evaluate the integral term in Eq. (1), the Monte Carlo approach
(Hsu & Bassok, 1999; Hu & Hu, 2018) can be applied. In the Monte Carlo

3
Y. Fujita et al. Computers & Industrial Engineering 163 (2022) 107856

method, uncertainty is represented using a number of discrete proba­

Subject to :
bilistic scenarios, and the demand realization in each scenario is
generated based on assumed probabilistic distribution. Then, the
j
∑
Amij = dmj for j = 1, …, N; m = 1, …, M
objective function can be transformed into a mixed-integer linear pro­ i=1
gramming problem formulated as follows, where m denotes the scenario
∑
N ∑
N
number and the total sampling scenario number for the Monte Carlo Amij ⩽ui wi + zmij for i = 1, …, N; m = 1, …, M
method is denoted by M. j=i j=i

{ } zmij ⩽Amij for i = 1, …, N; j = i, …, N; m = 1, …, M

∑N ∑N ∑
N ∑
N
Maximize
m m
F = − (tr i − tr )p
k ik + tr q
i i − sali wi ∑
N
pik ,qi ,Aij ,zij
i=1 k=i i=1 i=1 wi = pik + qi for i = 1, …, N
{ ( ) ( )}
j j
1 ∑M ∑
N ∑N ∑ ∑N ∑ k=i
+ rj dmj − cj Amij − sj zmij ∑
k
M m=1 j=1 j=1 i=1 j=1 i=1 w′k = pik for k = 1, …, N
(3) i=1

0⩽pik , qi , Amij , zmij for i = 1, …, N; j, k = i, …, N; m = 1, …, M

In this formulation, the balance between the demand realization and
the production quantity allocated to each seru which corresponds to 0⩽wi ⩽Wi for i = 1, …, N
Assumption 5 is represented as follows.
Note that while production quantity allocation Am
ij and product shortage
zm
ij for each Monte Carlo sampling scenario are handled as variables in
j
∑
Amij = dmj for j = 1, …, N; m = 1, …, M (4)
i=1 the above formulation, Aij and zij are finally fixed in the second opti­
mization step after demand realization is observed, as shown in Fig. 2.
Using this relationship, the term of total production cost in Eq. (3) can be Also note that although the problem includes several integer vari­
∑
represented more simply as Nj=1 cj dm j . ables, since the formulation of the optimization problem is linear as
Furthermore, the following constraints must be satisfied. First, if the shown above, the optimization problem can be solved using a regular
allocated product quantity is higher than the yield at each seru, product optimization tool.
shortage occurs and the amount of product shortage zij can be written as,
3.3.2. Product quantity allocation
∑ ∑ In the second optimization step, since the demand realization values
N N
Amij ⩽ui wi + zmij for i = 1, …, N; ​ m = 1, …, M (5)
j=i j=i for each product generation are already known, the optimization
problem can be formulated as follows,
Next, the shortage of each product allocated to each seru in each scenario (
j
)
∑N ∑
does not exceed the allocated quantity, and the number of workers of ′
Minimize F = sj zij (11)
each seru is the summation of the number of workers moved to the seru Aij ,zij
j=1 i=1
and the number of new no-skill workers added to the seru.
Subject to:
zmij ⩽Amij for i = 1, …, N; ​ j = i, …, N; ​ m = 1, …, M (6)
j
∑
∑
N Aij = dj for j = 1, …, N (12)
wi = pik + qi for i = 1, …, N (7) i=1

k=i
∑
N ∑
N

The following equation represents that the total number of workers Aij ⩽ui wi + zij for i = 1, …, N (13)
j=i j=i
moved from a certain seru to another seru is the number of workers in the
seru before worker assignment. zij ⩽Aij for i = 1, …, N; ​ j = i, …, N (14)
∑
k
w′k = pik for k = 1, …, N (8) 0⩽Aij , zij for i = 1, …, N; ​ j = i, …, N (15)
i=1

where F′ is the second-step objective function, and decision variables are

In addition, the following other numerical constraints must be satisfied. production quantity allocation Aij and the shortage of j-th generation
0⩽pik , qi , Amij , zmij for i = 1, …, N; ​ j, k = i, …, N; ​ m = 1, …, M (9) product allocated to seru i,zij . In this objective function, since the worker
arrangement is already fixed, the training and wage cost terms can be
0⩽wi ⩽Wi for i = 1, …, N (10) eliminated from the first-stage objective function since these two cost
terms are not the function of Aij and zij . Consequently, in this step, the
Summerizing the above, the worker allocation optimization problem
product quantity allocation is determined to minimize the total shortage
is formulated as follows.
cost depending on the observed demand realization.
{ }
∑ N ∑N ∑
N ∑
N
Maximize
m m
F =−
pik ,qi ,Aij ,zij
(tri − trk )pik + tri qi − sali wi 4. Results and discussion
i=1 k=i i=1 i=1
{ ( )}
4.1. Problem settings
j
1 ∑M ∑
N
( ) ∑N ∑
+ rj − cj dmj − sj zmij
M m=1 j=1 j=1 i=1
The proposed method is applied to a numerical example. In this
paper, the worker salary is inclined according to the number of gener­
ations the worker can produce, i.e. the seru number. The basic hourly
wage is set up at 2,500 JPY, and added by 300 JPY for each additional
generation they can process. That is, the hourly wage is described as
follows:

4
Y. Fujita et al. Computers & Industrial Engineering 163 (2022) 107856

sali = 2500 + 300 × (N − i) (16) 4.2. Results

We set that the workers in seru N need training for 32 h before pro­
duction, and when they increase the number of generations they can
process, additional training for 24 h is required. The training cost per
person per hour was set at 2500 JPY. Then,
tri = 2500 × {32 + 24 × (N − i)}
In this example, it is assumed that demand follows the normal dis­
tribution (Sun et al., 2021; Thevenin et al., 2020) while any type of
probability distribution can be used in the proposed optimization
formulation, since the Monte Carlo method is used to handle demand
uncertainty in the proposed optimization formulation and the yield is
deterministic. The expected demand and revenue per unit increase
progressively according to the generation of product. Furthermore, since
workers in serus labelled with smaller numbers are more skilled workers,
the value of yield per worker varies according to the seru number.
Table 1 shows the income per unit rj , the average demand μj of each
generation, and the yield per worker ui of each seru. Other parameters
were set as shown in Table 2 regardless of seru or generation number,
scenarios, and N.
In this study, Gurobi Optimizer 8.0.1 is used as the solver. In the
following section, the results obtained by the proposed method are
compared with the case where the uncertainty is not considered.
Therefore, the word “stochastic allocation” represents the solutions that
are obtained by the proposed method where the uncertainty is consid­
ered, and the “deterministic allocation” means the results in the case
when all random variables are fixed to their expected values and opti­
mization is conducted without considering the demand variation.
We conducted the optimization of worker allocation in three
different seru number cases where N = 3, 5, 7 and where the number of
the Monte Carlo sampling points was set to M = 5, 000, where this
number was determined through preliminary numerical experiments.
Fig. 3 and Table 3 show the obtained results. In addition, the optimi­
(17)
zation result for the deterministic allocation case is shown in Fig. 4 and
Table 4. Note that each value in the profit row in Table 4 is the profit in
the scenario where the demand is fixed at the expected value. Further­
more, in order to discuss the effect of demand variation parameters,
optimization is conducted for the cases where the standard deviation of
demand is set to μj /6, and the results are shown in Fig. 5 and Table 5.
4.3. Comparison
To compare the optimal solutions of the proposed method with
deterministic allocation solutions, both solutions are evaluated for the
scenarios generated using the same random seeds based on the demand
distribution function used in the optimization. Also, the solutions are
compared in the case where the demand is fixed at the expected value. In
this comparison, 10,000 demand scenarios are randomly generated, and
the 2nd-step optimization is conducted for each demand scenario. Then,
the profit in the stochastic and deterministic allocation for each scenario
is calculated. The average profit and the gap are as shown in Table 6. The
value in the row indicated by Gap shows the difference of the profits
between stochastic and deterministic allocation solutions.Table 7 shows
the profit for both stochastic and deterministic allocation solutions when
the realization demand is assumed to be equal to the expected values.
Furthermore, Table 8 shows the realization of demand for the scenario
where the profit difference was the largest.

Table 1 4.4. Discussion

rj , μj , ui of each generation.
By comparing Tables 3 and 4, it can be observed that the total
N Seru/Generation number
number of workers in solutions by the proposed method is larger than
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 the deterministic allocation to secure higher production capacity and
3 3000 4400 6200 respond to the uncertainty characteristics of demand. On the other hand,
rj 5 3000 3510 4100 5061 6200 deterministic solutions decrease the number of workers, reducing the
7 3000 3250 3580 3960 4506 5361 6200 training and salary cost, since even the lower production capacity is
3 6300 10654 18000 sufficient to meet the demand in the deterministic case.
μj 5 6300 7330 9130 12210 18000 Fig. 5 and Table 5 shows the optimal solution for a smaller demand
7 6300 6752 7330 9130 10654 13920 18000 variation case, i.e. standard deviation is set to μj /6. By comparing
3 2880 2699 2518 Figs. 3–5 and Tables 3–5, a strong correlation among demand fluctua­
ui 5 2880 2699 2518 2337 2156 tion and the total number of allocated workers is observed.
7 2880 2699 2518 2337 2156 1975 1794 Next, we discuss the average profit for 10,000 scenarios generated
randomly. Table 6 shows that the solutions provided by the proposed

Table 3
Table 2 Total number of workers and expected profit in stochastic optimization case.
Other parameters.
N =3 N =5 N =7
Wi w′i cj sj σj
Total number of workers 17 26 38
10 3 rj /3 2rj μj /3 Expected Profit (10,000 JPY) 9,334 12,851 16,036

Fig. 3. Result of stochastic worker allocation optimization.

5
Y. Fujita et al. Computers & Industrial Engineering 163 (2022) 107856

Fig. 4. Result of deterministic worker allocation.

Table 4 Table 5
Total number of workers and expected profit in deterministic optimization case. Total number of workers and expected profit in stochastic optimization case.
N =3 N =5 N =7 N =3 N =5 N =7

Total number of workers 13 22 33 Total number of workers 15 24 35

Profit (10,000 JPY) 10,022 13,862 17,351 Expected Profit (10,000 JPY) 9,682 13,410 16,708

method offer higher average profit than that of deterministic solutions. Table 6
Such comparisons illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimi­ Average profit in 10,000 scenarios (unit: 10,000JPY).
zation method for situations where demand highly fluctuates, while the N =3 N =5 N =7
profit of deterministic allocation is higher than the stochastic one in the
Stochastic Optimization 9,331 12,886 16,092
case where both random variables are fixed to the expected values, as
Deterministric Optimization 8,157 11,339 14,374
shown Table 7. Gap 1,174 1,574 1,718
Furthermore, Table 8 shows the realization values of demand in the
scenario when the profit difference between stochastic and deterministic
solutions is the largest among the randomly generated scenarios. As Table 7
shown in this figure, profit difference becomes significant when the Profit when the demand is fixed to expected value (unit: 10,000JPY).
demand realization of newer product generations is extremely larger N =3 N =5 N =7
than the expected value, since the deterministic allocation solution
Stochastic Optimization 9,510 13,146 16,365
employs fewer workers and the gap between demand and serus capacity Deterministric Optimization 10,022 13,862 17,351
results in large product shortage. In contrast, since the stochastic allo­ Gap -512 -716 -987
cation solution employs many workers to secure higher production ca­
pacity, the shortage and the decrease of profit can be suppressed.
From the above discussions, the importance of variation consider­ Table 8
ation in optimization and the effectiveness of the proposed method is Realization values for the largest profit difference scenario (unit: 10,000JPY).
successfully illustrated. N =3 N =5 N =7
In this example, three cases regarding the number of serus 3, 5 and 7 Stochastic Optimization 8,552 9,552 14,947
are examined. While these numbers are currently enough to describe the Deterministric Optimization − 2,913 754 6,019
practical implementation of seru production systems, if a greater large- Gap 11,464 8,798 8,856
scale production system is assumed, the number of integer variables is dj 1 5,391 5,445 6,033
increased and higher computational cost will be required. In order to 2 10,750 10,811 4,528
handle such cases, a more efficient optimization technique is needed to 3 43,735 11,561 5,508
be developed. This topic will be an important research topic in the 4 20,124 13,915
5 38,085 15,246
future.
6 21,356
7 38,394
5. Conclusion

In this paper, we propose an optimization method for worker allo­
cation and production quantity allocation problems in seru production
systems under uncertain demand. The results of this paper are summa­
rized as follows.
• We constructed a mathematical model for the seru production sys­
tems to determine worker and production quantity allocation under
uncertain demand.
• An optimization problem was formulated in a build-to-order pro­
duction case by using the Monte Carlo approach. The optimization

Fig. 5. Result of worker allocation optimization when σj = μj /6.

6
Y. Fujita et al.
process consists of two steps. In the first step, the worker allocation is
determined and the production plan is prepared considering demand
uncertainty. In the second step, the actual production plan is deter­
mined based on the observed demand realization.
• The proposed method was applied to a numerical example. Through
the comparison of the obtained solution with deterministic optimal
solutions, the effectiveness of the optimization method was
confirmed.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Yuya Fujita: Methodology, Software. Kazuhiro Izui: Conceptuali­
zation. Shinji Nishiwaki: Supervision. Zhe Zhang: Investigation. Yong
Yin: Investigation.
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