In 2005, GM won the Franz Edelman Award from INFORMS for its work
on production throughput analysis and
optimization. Even when overall industry
production capacity is above demand, it
is usually the case that demand for certain “hot” vehicles exceeds planned plant
capacities. In such cases, an increase in
production capacity will generate larger
profits via more sales revenue and/or
overtime cost avoidance.
GM’s operations research team
analyzed production throughput using
math models and s