Entropy-based quantification of a product’s BOM blocking effect

Abstract

Manufacturing complexity increases as a result of product configuration, and even though different manufacturing complexity measures have been developed, none of them seem to put attention to the blocking effect a product's bill-of-material imposes to the process flow. The following paper extends the research presented by the authors in a previous paper, where a set of entropic formulations were developed to act as an increase/decrease indicator of a manufacturing system's performance parameters. Our findings show that the improvements to the entropic formulations provide results that are closer to the system's performance parameters final values.

An Entropy-Based Formulation for Assessing the Complexity Level of a Mass Customization Industry 4.0 Environment

“…is conclusion is consistent with the previous reported findings, i.e., [76,77]. Now, before proceeding to Section 4, a couple of things must be mentioned.…”

“…e predictive validity refers to the ability to "predict" a theorized outcome, which is provided by following an entropy-based approach, as suggested by Reference [56]. e construct validity refers to the formality of the development process, which is based on previous published work by the author [76,77], where an entropybased metric of a product's BOM blocking effect is derived. e usefulness of the βε MC 4.0 expression is demonstrated via the use of a discrete-event simulation model of a mass customization production system operating within an Industry 4.0 environment.…”

“…At this point, it must be noted that, in order for the βε MC 4.0 expression to truly represent the manufacturing complexity of a mass customization production system operating within an Industry 4.0 environment, the complexity contribution of the product, process, and resources elements must be taken into account. ese elements refer to (i) Product: the different number of manufactured products, the number of number of corresponding components and functions, and the overall products' mix ratio (ii) Process: the different routings for each product and the corresponding processing times (iii) Resources: the different types of machinery, number and type of operations capable of performing, and number of required setups Mass customization measurement [24,27,67] Mass customization and complexity [27,68,69] Mass customization and flexibility [22,[72][73][74][75] Flexibility and complexity [30] 4 Mathematical Problems in Engineering Now, Martínez-Olvera explained in his work of [76] (equation 1) and [77] (equation 2) why formulations such as the ones presented by [58,86] need to be modified in order to reflect the impact the BOM structure has on the process flow. In a similar way, equations (1) and (2) must be adapted in order to reflect the manufacturing complexity contribution to the mass customization production system operating within an Industry 4.0 environment:…”