Transients in flexible manufacturing systems with setups and batch operations: Modeling, analysis, and design

Abstract

Significant research and practice efforts have been devoted to flexible manufacturing systems. Many of them focus on performance analysis, production and inventory control, planning, and scheduling. Steady state analysis is prevalent in these studies. The transient behavior of flexible lines is less investigated. However, the dynamic changes in customer demands and the uncertain nature in production make the transient performance critical for system control, scheduling, and improvement. Due to non-negligible setups during product change, batch operation is typically carried out in many flexible lines. How to design the system to allocate multiple products, determine batch size, and schedule part sequence is of significant importance to system performance during transients. In this article, an analytical method is developed to evaluate the system throughput, work-in-process, and other performance measures in transient periods for multi-product lines with Bernoulli reliability machines, finite buffers, non-negligible setups, and batch productions. System properties, such as monotonicity, are discussed. Moreover, optimal order assignment and part scheduling in systems with multiple flexible lines are studied. Both centralized and decentralized optimization policies are investigated.

Keywords:

• Flexible manufacturing systems
• Bernoulli reliability model
• batch size
• transient analysis
• setups

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mengyue Wang

Mengyue Wang received the B.S. degree from a Department of Logistic Management, Nankai University, Tianjin, China, in 2015. She is now working towards Ph.D. degree at the Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Her research interests include modeling, analysis and optimization of production systems, supply chains, and complex systems.

Hongxuan Huang

Hongxuan Huang received dual B.S. degrees from the Department of Applied Mathematics and the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, an M.S. degree from the Department of Applied Mathematics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and a Ph.D. degree in management engineering from the School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA, Beihang University) in 1990, 1992, and 1997, respectively. He was an assistant professor, lecturer and associate professor at the Department of Mathematics, Tsinghua University, from 1992 to 2004. He has been an associate professor of operations research and statistics in the Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, since 2004. He was a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Global Optimization (06/2002-12/2015), Computers and Operations Research (01/2007-04/2016), and the Optimization Letters (12/2005-present). He is also a member of Discrete Event Simulation Committee of the Chinese Association for System Simulation (CASS, 03/2007-present). He is the author of two books on mathematical programming and the author of several book chapters, including Encyclopedia of Optimization, as well as of a number of papers in journals and conference proceedings. He has worked on numerous research projects in areas of nonconvex optimization, data science, and operations research from National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Education, China, and some major corporations such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, and Siemens Ltd. China. His primary research interests include operations research modeling, simulation, and optimization related to the global supply chain, and focus on the theory of virtual standard currency for measuring objectively the performance of businesses across different currency zones.

Jingshan Li

Jingshan Li received BS and MS degrees in automation and PhD in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and University of Michigan, in 1989, 1992 and 2000, respectively. He was with General Motors Research & Development Center from 2000 to 2006, and with University of Kentucky from 2006 to 2010. He is now a professor in Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and the Associate Director of Wisconsin Institute of Healthcare Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. He received the 2010 NSF Career Award, 2006 IEEE Early Career Award, and multiple best paper awards in IIE Transactions, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, and multiple prestigious international conferences. He is the Senior Editor, Department Editor, Area Editor, and Associate Editor of multiple IEEE and IISE Transactions and leading journals in manufacturing and service systems. He is an IEEE Fellow and an IISE Fellow, and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in robotics and automation, and organizational chairs of multiple flagship international conferences. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering. His primary research interests are in modeling, analysis and control of manufacturing and healthcare systems. His research has been supported by NSF, DOE, NIST, PCORI, AHRQ, manufacturing companies and healthcare organizations.