Abstract:We consider the production decision-making problem of a Make-to-Order enterprise in which the demand is uncertainty. Such enterprises frequently face a scenario that customer’s product order demands are unpredictable varies over time, while the set-up cost for producing a single batch product is high, but enterprises can delayed to delivery under the condition of paying some certain delayed fee. We thus need to consider some appropriate production strategy to reduce the cost loss, i.e., need to study the decision-making problem of determining when to produce which product under the condition of uncertain order demand in the future so as to optimize the total set-up production cost and delay penalty cost. Previous studies have generally assumed that demand information, including order arrival time and order size, fluctuates randomly. However, in reality, such information is often unpredictable and cannot be characterized by probability distribution. Therefore, this paper considers the optimal production decision-making problem in the case of unknown future order demand information from the perspective of online theory. We construct the corresponding mathematical model, design a competition strategy, and prove that it has a superior constant competition ratio. Numerical analysis further validates the effectiveness of the strategy.