Planning and control of rework in the process industries: a review

For all kinds of reasons, rework, i.e. the transformation of products not fulfilling preset specifications into products that do, is an important issue in process industries. Despite a considerable amount of published research on planning and control of rework, and in addition many papers referring to the existence of rework in the process industries, hardly any attention has been paid to the consequences of many process industries specific characteristics for execution, planning and control of rework operations. Here are identified the characteristics of the process industries that influence the possibilities for rework in these industries, based on a framework provided by Flapper and Jensen (International Journal of Production Research, 1999, to be published). How the available operations management literature assists in determining operational strategies for planning and control of rework in process industries is assessed. It is concluded that many relevant and interesting problems have not been addressed.