Time window capacity analysis for synchronous production

Abstract

Synchronous production is a philosophy that suggests that the right part should arrive at the right machine at the right time to minimize the inventory and operating costs. To achieve this goal a synchronous material flow is required. How ever, this is not an easy task in the discrete manufacturing environment because it requires management commitment and algorithmic development. This paper proposes a time window capacity analysis (TWCA) approach to implement the synchronous production. By dividing the production time into small time windows, simple rules, heuristics and algorithms are developed to assign operations among available resources such that the inventory and operating costs are kept low. The synchronization is achieved by resolving the demands of each operation in the order of time windows. The approach is simple and has been implemented and tested in an actual manufacturing company. The results show that TWCA is practical and promising. TWCA has the potential to be used in either single, multiple, or parallel machines, one stage or multi-stage, job shops or flow shops, and closed or open systems.

Keywords:

• production scheduling
• synchronous production
• operations management
• integrated manufacturing

Additional information

Notes on contributors

YIH-LONG CHANG

YIH-LONG CHANG is an Associate Professor in the School of Management at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his PhD degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1985. Before his current appointment, he was on the faculty at the University of Arizona and Ohio State University. His research and teaching interests include the interface between operations management issues and artificial intelligence methodologies. He has published articles in journals including Annals of Operations Research, Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Production Research, Management Science, Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, OR Letters, and Simulation. He has also written several software packages that are widely used for teaching concepts in operations management and management science.