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Design and control of agile automated CONWIP production lines
Author(s) -
Hopp Wallace J.,
Iravani Seyed M.R.,
Shou Biying,
Lien Robert
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
naval research logistics (nrl)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.665
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1520-6750
pISSN - 0894-069X
DOI - 10.1002/nav.20325
Subject(s) - agile software development , automation , computer science , flexibility (engineering) , production line , robustness (evolution) , protocol (science) , manufacturing engineering , heuristic , control (management) , agile manufacturing , industrial engineering , software engineering , engineering , mechanical engineering , medicine , biochemistry , statistics , chemistry , alternative medicine , mathematics , pathology , artificial intelligence , gene
In this article, we study the design and control of manufacturing cells with a mix of manual and automated equipment, operating under a CONWIP pull protocol, and staffed by a single agile (cross‐trained) worker. For a three‐station line with one automated station, we fully characterize the structure of the optimal control policy for the worker and show that it is a static priority policy. Using analytical models and extensive simulation experiments, we also evaluate the effectiveness of practical heuristic control policies and provide managerial insights on automation configuration design of the line. This characterization of the worker control policy enables us to develop managerial insights into the design issues of how best to locate and concentrate automation in the line. Finally, we show that, in addition to ease of control and greater design flexibility, the CONWIP protocol also offers higher efficiency and robustness than does the push protocol. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 2009