Study and Prospects: Adaptive Planning and Control of Supply Chain in One-of-a-kind Production

Based on the research project titled “Adaptive Planning and Control of Supply Chain in One-of-a-kind Production”, the research group performed a systematic review of supply chain integration, risk prediction and control and trace ability. Studies of a computer-aided and integrated production system for cost-effective OKP systemare included. Our efforts relevant to integration of supply chain in OKP, modeling &control of ripple effects in OKP supply chain and the trace ability of the OKP supply chain are introduced in this paper

A method for enhancing the production planning of ship machinery out-fitting

Laivanrakennusteollisuuden projektit ovat monimutkaisia ja kertaluontoisia toimitusprojekteja. Laivan varusteluprosessia ei ole aikataulutettu yksityiskohtaisesti telakoilla, sillä laivan varustelun suunnittelu ja kontrollointi on haastavaa. Lisäksi laivateollisuudessa käytettävä aluerakentaminen muodostaa aikataulujen suunnittelussa ongelman, sillä suunnittelu ja käyttöönotto toteutetaan järjestelmittäin kun taas rakentaminen tapahtuu alueittain. Erityisesti konetornin konevarustelun aikatauluttaminen on osoittautunut laivaprojekteissa haasteelliseksi, koska se sisältää suurimman osan laivan järjestelmistä. Tässä tutkimuksessa keskityttiin Arctech Helsinki Shipyardin laivanrakennusprojektien konetornin konevarustelun aikatauluhaasteisiin. Työssä selvitettiin, miten konetornin konevarustelu tulee osittaa niin, että konetornin kriittinen polku tulee huomioitua. Lisäksi tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin, miten kriittisen polun tehtävien riippuvuussuhteet tulee määritellä. Konevarustelun tehtävien resurssit ja kestot rajattiin tarkastelun ulkopuolelle. Kirjallisuuden pohjalta valikoitiin parhaimmat projektinhallinnan työkalut konetornin konevarustelun osittamiseksi. Tässä tutkimuksessa hyödynnettiin niin kutsuttua analyyttistä menetelmää. Lisäksi hyödynnettiin telakan toiminnanohjausmallia yhdessä venäläisten luoman MCR (Mechanical Completion Report) -toiminnanohjausmallin kanssa. Tutkimustulosten pohjalta kehitettiin menetelmä konetornin konevarustelun osittamiseksi. Menetelmällä luodaan järjestelmäpohjaiset tehtäväverkot konetornin konevarustelulle. Menetelmällä luodut tehtäväverkot sisältävät aluekohtaiset tehtävät järjestelmille. Menetelmää soveltamalla kaikkiin konetornin järjestelmiin voidaan koko konetorni osittaa ja jakaa alue- ja järjestelmäaikatauluihin. Tämä mahdollistaa laivaprojektin edistymisen seurannan sekä aluerakentamistavan että järjestelmäpohjaisen suunnittelun mukaisesti. Menetelmästä saatiin luotua monipuolinen tapa ryhmitellä ja osittaa aluetehtäviä järjestelmille, joka kuitenkin ottaa huomioon telakan käyttämän rakentamistavan. Menetelmässä onnistuttiin myös integroimaan eri mallien hyvät puolet yhdistämällä niihin projektinhallinnan hyväksi todettuja työkaluja. Menetelmän avulla on mahdollista selvittää konetornin kriittinen polku, jos sitä jatkokehitetään ottamaan huomioon tehtävien kestot.Shipbuilding industry projects are complex and one-of-a-kind made-to-order projects. The outfitting processes for ships are not scheduled in detail, because the planning and controlling of the outfitting process is challenging. In addition, the area construction method that is used in shipbuilding industry creates a problem, because planning and initialization are system based, but construction is area based. Scheduling the machinery outfitting in ship projects has proven to be especially challenging, because most of the systems are located in machinery spaces. This research is focused on the machinery outfitting scheduling challenges of Arctech Hel-sinki Shipyard shipbuilding projects. The purpose is to find out how to breakdown the machinery outfitting process, so that the critical path is taken into account. In addition, it is discussed how the interdependences of critical path tasks should be defined. The re-sources and durations of machinery outfitting tasks are not included in this research. The best project management tools were chosen for breaking down the machinery outfitting process. In this research, the so-called analytical method is exploited. In addition to the literature review, the shipyards own and the Russian MCR (Mechanical Completion Re-port) production planning models are incorporated to the research. From the research, a method for breaking down the machinery outfitting process was de-veloped. System based task networks can be generated with the method. The system based task networks also include area-based tasks. By applying the method to all machinery sys-tems, the machinery outfitting process can be broken down and divided into system and area based schedules. This enables better progress evaluation in system based planning and area based construction. The developed method is a diverse way to breakdown and group area based tasks for sys-tems. In addition, the method also takes into account the method of construction that is used at the shipyard. The method also successfully integrates the different production planning models combining them with well-tried project management tools. The critical path of machinery outfitting can also be investigated, if the method is further developed to take into account the durations of machinery outfitting tasks

ADAPTIVE SCHEDULING FOR OPERATING ROOM MANAGEMENT

The perioperative process in hospitals can be modelled as a 3-stage no-wait flow shop. The utilization of OR units and the average waiting time of patients are related to makespan and total completion time, respectively. However, minimizations of makespan and total completion time are NP-hard and NP-complete. Consequently, achieving good effectiveness and efficiency is a challenge in no-wait flow shop scheduling. The average idle time (AIT) and current and future idle time (CFI) heuristics are proposed to minimize makespan and total completion time, respectively. To improve effectiveness, current idle times and future idle times are taken into consideration and the insertion and neighborhood exchanging techniques are used. To improve efficiency, an objective increment method is introduced and the number of iterations is determined to reduce the computation times. Compared with three best-known heuristics for each objective, AIT and CFI heuristics can achieve greater effectiveness in the same computational complexity based on a variety of benchmarks. Furthermore, AIT and CFI heuristics perform better on trade-off balancing compared with other two best-known heuristics. Moreover, using the CFI heuristic for operating room (OR) scheduling, the average patient flow times are decreased by 11.2% over historical ones at University of Kentucky Health Care

A product design framework for one-of-a-kind production using integrated quality function deployment and operational research techniques

The process of product design as an early stage of new product development provides systematic approaches that can lead to the success of a company’s competitive strategy in the current turbulent market. By launching an efficient product design procedure can result in the reduction of engineering modifications, cost and production time. One-of-a-Kind Product (OKP) is known as a particular manufacturing system of new product design and development with emphasis on the special order concept. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a comprehensive design framework with cross-functional team members that leads to the development of new or improved products. QFD starts with the House of Quality (HOQ) as an organizing matrix to identify the customers’ requirements (CRs) and translate them into the technical attributes (TAs) of the product and followed by determining the target values for the sets of technical attributes. An evaluation approach to determine the relative importance of CRs and TAs should be considered. In previous researches, the traditional methods such as simple scoring method and application of operational research techniques such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were reported to weigh the requirements and attributes. Despite the obvious inner-relationships among the elements, considering the HOQ as a hierarchical system may be inefficient. In addition, the contradictory effects of a TA on two or more CRs, is the problem that has been neglected. Here, a mathematical model was developed for calculating the TAs target values. A case study (dry gas filter, Namdaran Petro-Gas Industries (NPI™)) is presented to exhibit and verify the procedure of OKP product design. Initially, the framework was developed by integrating QFD-operational research (Analytic Network Process (ANP)) as a systematic method for improvement of dry gas filter design. Interview and study of documents were used to identify the CRs. A robust evaluation on customers’ priority and attributes’ importance with respect to inner-relationships among criteria/sub-criteria was performed. Furthermore, the effects of TAs on CRs with regard to their direction (positive/negative) were considered as the fundamental for developing a Multi-Objective Decision Model (MODM) to be used for determining the TAs target values. For this purpose, the fuzzy conversion scaling technique followed by formulating the partial satisfaction separately was applied. Modified TOPSIS was used to select the basic design among the available designs for further modification. Later, the process continues with the second phase, translating the TAs into the key parts. The available options (retailers) to supply the key parts were identified. As the normal procedure of QFD the relative importance’s of key parts and the options were determined. Finally, a zero-one goal programming was presented to select the optimum options for each key part subject to the budget constraint. Overall, the developed QFD-ANP framework provides a systematic approach that has the potential to be used for designing OKP product

An efficient heuristic for adaptive production scheduling and control in one-of-a-kind production

Even though research in flow shop production scheduling has been carried out for many decades, there is still a gap between research and applicationespecially in manufacturing paradigms such as one-of-a-kind production (OKP) that intensely challenges real time adaptive production scheduling and control. Indeed, many of the most popular heuristics continue to use Johnson's algorithm (1954) as their core. This paper presents a state space (SS) heuristic, integrated with a closed-loop feedback control structure, to achieve adaptive production scheduling and control in OKP. Our SS heuristic, because of its simplicity and computational efficiency, has the potential to become a core heuristic. Through a series of case studies, including an industrial implementation in OKP, our SS-based production scheduling and control system demonstrates significant potential to improve production efficiency. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Production Scheduling

Generally speaking, scheduling is the procedure of mapping a set of tasks or jobs (studied objects) to a set of target resources efficiently. More specifically, as a part of a larger planning and scheduling process, production scheduling is essential for the proper functioning of a manufacturing enterprise. This book presents ten chapters divided into five sections. Section 1 discusses rescheduling strategies, policies, and methods for production scheduling. Section 2 presents two chapters about flow shop scheduling. Section 3 describes heuristic and metaheuristic methods for treating the scheduling problem in an efficient manner. In addition, two test cases are presented in Section 4. The first uses simulation, while the second shows a real implementation of a production scheduling system. Finally, Section 5 presents some modeling strategies for building production scheduling systems. This book will be of interest to those working in the decision-making branches of production, in various operational research areas, as well as computational methods design. People from a diverse background ranging from academia and research to those working in industry, can take advantage of this volume