Definition

The make-to-stock production model describes the manufacturing of large quantities of standardized products, which are then placed on stock and subsequently sold to customers. Typically, the make-to-stock production model is used when there are a few product lines and long costly changeover times between products.

The make-to-stock scheduling objective ensures constant equipment utilization and allows optimization of lot sizes, which leads to a maximization of output.

The production processes deployed in discrete manufacturing are not continuous in nature. Each process can be individually started or stopped and can be run at varying production rates. Products in discrete manufacturing industries require often to perform many production steps in an order distinct to the specific product. Sometimes combined with quite complex structures of a product-specific bill of material, defining which components and materials are required to assemble the final product.

Very likely, the production is done in several stages with intermediates, for which individual production orders are generated. In some industries such as automotive, the hierarchical structure of a product's bill of material can be as deep as 23 levels with intermediate products on each level. Those are rarely produced with on enterprise but rather in a highly complex supply chain of many levels of suppliers contributing to the final product.

In this scenario, material requirements planning (MRP) is applied, which only evaluates material requirements. The actual resolving of possible capacity or resource constraints takes place in a manual monitoring process.