Method of buffering critical resources in make-to-order shop floor control in manufacturing complex products

Abstract

The article presents the results of research on creating a dedicated planning system and shop floor control in the conditions of make-to-order in manufacturing complex products. The research was carried out at the Marine Diesel Engines Factory of HCP S.A., Poznan. HCP S.A. is the biggest producer of high-power marine engines in Europe. The result of the research is a method for buffering critical resources in shop floor control. These methods of buffering critical resources include procedures of buffer management, (buffer configuration and optimisation), a system of disruption compensation and feedback protecting from the destructive influence of 'wandering bottlenecks'. The simulations show that this method is more effective than the classical drum-buffer-rope production solution, according to the theory of constraints (TOC), using the first-in-first-out rule. Finally, the lead time and the level of work-in-process were about 20% lower than the solution recommended to TOC. In the final part of the article a place and a method of implementing the solution in a planning system of the enterprise are discussed.

Archives of Control Sciences

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Machine criticality based maintenance prioritization

“…Whereas, a cost-based criticality identifies critical machines using economies of multiple factors and is used for prioritizing maintenance work orders (Moore and Starr, 2006). Bottleneck machines are also termed critical in some articles, such as bottleneck criticality for scheduling problems (Mönch and Zimmermann, 2007), bottleneck criticality for buffering (Hadas et al , 2009), and shifting bottleneck criticalities to minimize lateness in a job shop (Holtsclaw and Uzsoy, 1996).…”

Establishing Criteria for Designing Production Systems Using Self- Organizing Neural Networks

“…Only the synergistic combination of the two criteria allows for continuous system development by maintaining its balance. However, in the case of "strong" constraint in the production system (difficult to "break"), a tailored production planning system needs to be built [11], to maximize the utilization of the critical resource (and therefore going to achieve the maximum throughput of the system). Alignment of capacity utilization can be managed in a variety of ways, but at different hierarchical levels.…”