Analysis of the Effect of the Line‐Seru Conversion on the Waiting Time with Batch Arrival

Abstract

The conveyor assembly line has been widely used in manufacturing industries to produce standard products with low costs. However, due to lack of flexibility, this production method has not been conducive to multivariety and small-batch production. In this situation, seru production formed by converting conveyor assembly lines has been a successful innovation in the Japanese manufacturing industry. Most of the existing literature has studied the benefits of this line-seru conversion from the perspective of the enterprises themselves, but this paper studies the effect of the line-seru conversion on the waiting time from the perspective of the customer. First, the change in the average waiting queue length caused by the line-seru conversion is proposed as an evaluation index. Second, with the consideration of the practical situation of random batch arrivals, the average waiting queue length formulas for the conveyor assembly line and seru production are established based on the assumption that the arrival is a Poisson process. Then, under two scenarios, we investigate the relationship between the average waiting queue length changed by the line-seru conversion and other parameters and find that the conversion can reduce the average waiting queue length in multivariety and small-batch production. Finally, under other potential scenarios, the equations for determining the average waiting queue length resulting from a change to line-seru conversion are derived.

Management and Production Engineering Review

“…Hence, the influence of learning curves on the skills should be explored. Gong et al (2009), Manupati et al (2015), Ren & Wang (2019) In Table A.1, "Relationship between employees" refers to the operator's ability to perform multiple tasks, which was already included.…”

“…Another study (Ren & Wang, 2019) pointed out the lack of studies from a customer's perspective. Subsequently, they proposed a method to determine the time of receiving products.…”

“…Zwierzyński & Ahmad (2018),Liu et al (2015),Beber (2019),Yu et al (2014),Yu et al (2017),Yu et al (2013),Yu et al (2016),Gai et al (2020),,Wang & Tang (2018),Ayough et al (2020),Sun et al (2016),Han et al (2018),Liu et al (2013),Gong et al (2009),Yilmaz (2020b),,Ren & Wang (2019) …”

Seru üretim sistemlerinde yükleme problemi için karışık tamsayılı bir matematiksel model ve mat-sezgisel çözüm yaklaşımı

“…Önerdikleri model için NSGA-II sezgiseli kullanmışlardır. Ren ve Wang [23], çalışmalarında hat-seru tasarımı problemlerini tezgah ve istasyonlar arasındaki kuyruklarda ortalama bekleme açısından değerlendirmişlerdir. Pratik uygulamalardan yola çıkarak sisteme varışların Poisson süreçlerine uygun ve rassal olduğu varsayımları altında klasik montaj hattı ve dönüştürülen seru sistemleri için kuyruk teorisinden faydalanılarak ortalama bekleme zamanını veren formüller geliştirilmiştir.…”

A two-phase branch-and-bound algorithm for seru scheduling problems with sequence-dependent setup time

“…To minimize cost and maximize service level, Wang et al (2018) [46] studied the problem of seru formation under uncertain demand by establishing a multi-objective optimization model. Ren and Wang (2019) [34] took the change of average waiting queue length caused by seru formation as an evaluation index, and found that seru formation can reduce the average waiting queue length in multi-variety and small-batch production. Zhang et al (2020) [64] studied the seru formation problem of unbalanced SPS and designed an algorithm based on PSO to solve it.…”