‘Just-In-Time’ Production of Large Assemblies

Abstract

The problem of scheduling operations in a manufacturing facility that produces large assemblies is considered. Given the due dates of the end items, the objective is to determine a schedule that minimizes the cumulative production lead time. The lot sizes of the end items are considered known and ‘just-in-time’ (JIT) production is assumed. The scheduling problem within such an environment has been formulated and is NP-hard. Its similarities to and differences from the well studied resource-constrained project scheduling problem have been established. An efficient heuristic is developed that uses the precedence network of operations to prioritize execution of those operations that belong to a dynamically computed critical path. The effectiveness of the proposed heuristic is assessed in terms of cumulative lead-time and work-in-process inventory (WIP) costs.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

A. Agrawal

Ashutosh Agrawal is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is conducting research in the area of Agile Manufacturing for Electronics. He holds an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.E. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Roorkee, India.

I. Minis

Ioannis Minis is an Associate Professor of the University of Maryland at College Park, where he holds a joint appointment with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research. He received his undergraduate degree from the National Technical University of Athens in 1982, the M.S. from Clarkson University, 1983, and the Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park, all in Mechanical Engineering. Dr Minis is the recipient of the 1993 Earl E. Walker Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He also received the Best Paper Award in the area of Engineering Database Management at the 1992 ASME International Conference on Computers in Engineering. His main research interests are in the areas of machine dynamics and control, and production systems.

R. Nagi

Rakesh Nagi is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering at the State University of New York, Buffalo. His B.E. (1987) degree in Mechanical Engineering is from University of Roorkee, India. He received his M.S. (1989) and Ph.D. (1991) degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park, he worked at the Institute for Systems Research and INRIA, France, and received the outstanding graduate student award. His research interests lie mainly in the areas of design of production system, hierarchical production planning and scheduling. His more recent interests are in agile and lean manufacturing. He is a member of the IIE.