Patent ID: 7369910

Claim:
A method for optimizing a production process having starting products, intermediate products, and at least one final product, having the steps of quant generation and optimization, wherein a feasible production plan for performing and/or controlling the production process is obtained as a result of the method, the feasible production plan is established from the following starting variables: target inventory quantities of the at least one final product for a period, and a material flow network, in which one or more production steps are each describable by one or more precursor products and one or more successor products and linkages between production steps are describable through precursor and successor products and through material factors; in the step of quant generation, a product flow network is run through starting from a target inventory quantity of the at least one final product and a last process step in time via individual process steps up to a first process step in time, one or more quants are generated for each existing demand for a successor product of a production step, a quant is determined by a product, a period, and a process step, demands for precursor products are predetermined in accordance with the product flow network are established from the target inventory quantity of the product corresponding to the quant for each quant generated, a quant network is formed by connecting the quants through material flows, and the step of optimization implements individual quants in a feasible production plan by assigning individual production steps to one or more resources and ordering them in a temporal sequence.