The costs of starting‐up and shutting down production lines (and plants) in a process industry are often quite high. Therefore, when a plant's capacity significantly exceeds its forecast demand over an annual planning horizon, a manufacturer must either plan temporary production line shutdowns during the year, or plan to temporarily idle production lines without formally shutting line(s) down. The trade‐offs between these two strategies can be complex. In this paper, we propose a methodology to evaluate the impact of both strategies on a plant's production costs by developing an analytical model based on the authors' experience with several process industries.
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