Workload Control order release in general and pure flow shops with limited buffer size induced blocking: an assessment by simulation

Abstract

Most manufacturing shops in practice have limited physical space in front of each workstation, due, for example, to physical, economical or operational constraints. As a result, a job may cause blocking because it has to remain at a given station after an operation has been completed until space in front of the next station in its routing becomes available. Despite this practical reality, the Workload Control literature typically assumes infinite buffer limits and therefore neglects the impact of blocking. Using simulation, we highlight the direct, detrimental impact of blocking in both the pure and general flow shop. Workload Control order release dampens the effect of blocking and improves overall performance. This makes Workload Control order release even more important in the context of shops with blocking or physical space constraints. Further analysis reveals that the impact of blocking is less pronounced in the pure flow shop given its directed routing. Finally, most of the blocking that occurs is because jobs cannot enter the shop, i.e. there is no space in front of the gateway station. This re-emphasizes the close relationship between blocking and release methods that limit the workload, and it highlights the importance of workload balancing.

Material handling and order release control in high-variety make-to-order shops: an assessment by simulation

“…Meanwhile, Sabuncuoglu and Karapinar (1999) observed a positive performance effect from order release control in a pure job shop with material handling and a limited buffer size. It is argued here that this is explained by the potential of order release control to reduce the blocking of resources, which enhances its performance effect in shops with limited buffer sizes (Thürer et al 2021). In general, our study emphasizes that the need for transportation has a strong impact on the applicability of order release methods, such as Workload Control.…”

“…Both have infinite capacity to keep our study focused on the interaction between production planning and control and vehicle management. For a recent assessment of the interaction between buffer induced blocking and order release, the reader is referred to Thürer et al (2021).…”

“…Hendry et al 2013;Silva et al 2015;Perona et al 2016;Huang 2017;Sellitto 2018;Hutter et al 2018) and using simulation (e.g. Portioli-Staudacher and Tantardini 2011;Thürer et al 2012Thürer et al , 2014Thürer et al , 2021Fernandes et al 2016Fernandes et al , 2020Gonzalez-R et al 2018;Haeussler and Netzer 2020).…”

Order review and release in make-to-order flow shops: analysis and design of new methods

“…This implies an average service rate of 16 orders during a day of 8 h. Given the arrival rate of 15 orders per day, this leads to an average utilization of 93.75%. We assume that sufficient space is available between the workstations to avoid blocking, contrary to a recent study of Thürer et al (2020) that studies limited buffer sizes. Due date setting is not always a straightforward process in practice and a wide variety of methods has been adopted (Caprihan et al 2006;Zorzini et al 2008;Thürer et al 2019c).…”

Parallel Makespan Calculation for Flow Shop Scheduling Problem with Minimal and Maximal Idle Time

“…In order to better model real-life situations, more specific problem variants with additional constraints are considered. Such constraints may include, for example, transport times [12], setups [13], limited buffers [14] or idle times [15]. As a result, state-of-the-art solving methods often have to employ problem-specific properties to be efficient.…”