Influence of product variety on work allocation and server distribution of flexible manufacturing lines. Issue 1 (October 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Arteaga, A; Calvo, R
• Is Part Of: IOP conference series. Volume 1193:Issue 1(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-10
• Subjects: Bowl effect -- Workload allocation -- Flexible manufacturing lines -- Stochastic manufacturing simulation; Materials science -- Periodicals; 620.1105
• DOI: 10.1088/1757-899X/1193/1/012046
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1757-8981

Abstract

Abstract: Mass customization involves medium volume production of a high variety of products where flexible manufacturing systems can cope with it. The work allocation problem of assigning the work content of each workstation in a manufacturing line is formulated as the design problem of capacity allocation across the line by looking for the throughput maximization and/or simultaneous work-in-process containment or minimization. The bowl phenomenon refers to the distribution shape of work across the workstations in unpaced flow line (asynchronous flow) with buffers, experimentally observed and conjectured back in the 1960's, but with theoretical roots not successfully established up today. The increasing value of flexible capability for mass customization makes worthy the research of the phenomenon in the presence of product variety, beyond the classical model of balanced dedicated flow lines. The three problems of workload, buffer, and server allocation are closely related, and they have been previously studied in queuing networks with metaheuristics. This paper faces the effect of product variety (service time variability) impact on the performance of the flow line, researching the bowl effect through experimental analysis. The results show a main influence of the coefficient of variation of the service times with the secondary effect of the buffer size.