Production scheduling process design at Fine Blanking

Production scheduling, as described by the encyclopaedia of Britannica are referred to as the attempt to balance the demand for products with the available inputs and plant capacity as well as the scheduling of inbound materials, components and resources to fit into the production process. The production process itself is scheduled to fulfil existing and forecasted orders with the key goal aimed at operating in the most efficient manner while satisfying the timing of customer requirements. Production processes can easily be over-emphasised at the expense of customer satisfaction or customer satisfaction at the expense of efficiency. At Tri-Axis Engineering, one of the companies within the Fine Blanking group, efficiency and optimal resource utilization is compromised due to over-emphasised customer satisfaction. Despite the fact that customer satisfaction is over-emphasised, customer satisfaction levels are still low due to late product delivery. In order to determine the cause of late product delivery, current production scheduling methods were examined. It was found that little to no effort was made regarding production scheduling, as the importance of production scheduling was not yet noticed. The project aims at creating an awareness to show the influence and benefits gained from efficient production scheduling regarding costs, the decrease in work-in progress and the reduction of non-value adding activities. Different engineering techniques were examined and applied to illustrate the difference between more and less effective scheduling solutions. Several start-off points required for effective scheduling were studied and introduced to the management team. In the end the objective of the project is to encourage management at Tri- Axis engineering to follow the suggested production scheduling process design.Thesis (B.Eng. (Industrial and Systems Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2012

a drum-buffer-rope based scheduling method for semiconductor manufacturing system

Scheduling in semiconductor manufacturing system is an important task for the industries faced with a large amount of resource competitions. Effective scheduling can improve the overall system performance and customer satisfaction. In this paper, a scheduling method with the core of bottleneck equipment control is designed referring to Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR) theory. In order to identify the main-bottleneck, the relative load which takes the feature of reentrance into consideration is applied. For the avoidance of local blocking, the management of sub-bottleneck is presented. As both releasing and dispatching are taken into account, a scheduling method based on the compound priority is formed. Finally, HP-24 semiconductor wafer fabrication is used as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. © 2011 IEEE.Ansaldo Sistemi Industriali - Results to the Power of ThreeScheduling in semiconductor manufacturing system is an important task for the industries faced with a large amount of resource competitions. Effective scheduling can improve the overall system performance and customer satisfaction. In this paper, a scheduling method with the core of bottleneck equipment control is designed referring to Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR) theory. In order to identify the main-bottleneck, the relative load which takes the feature of reentrance into consideration is applied. For the avoidance of local blocking, the management of sub-bottleneck is presented. As both releasing and dispatching are taken into account, a scheduling method based on the compound priority is formed. Finally, HP-24 semiconductor wafer fabrication is used as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. © 2011 IEEE