Performance Improvement Through Benchmarking for Small and Medium Manufacturers (SMM)

Die wichtigsten Kostenfaktoren innerhalb einer Lieferkette lassen sich drei Kategorien zuordnen: Produktions-, Transport-und Lagerkosten. Die Strukturen dieser operativen Kosten im Hinblick auf die Gesamtkosten variieren stark je nach Industriesektor. Produktionskosten stellen dennoch die höchste Kostenart in fast allen Branchen dar, weniger bedeutend folgen danach jeweils die Transport- und Lagerkosten. Die Optimierung einer dieser Kategorien ohne Rücksicht auf die anderen kann zur Erhöhung der Gesamtkosten sowie der allgemeinen Leistungsfähigkeit führen. Diese Dissertation befasst sich mit dem „production distribution problem“ wobei synchronisierte Strategien entwickelt werden können, um die Leistung der Supply Chain zu verbessern und gleichzeitig die Gesamtkosten zu minimieren. Dazu wurde eine Fallstudie aus der Realität untersucht, nämlich das Praxisbeispiel eines Herstellers von Waschmitteln. Zwei Hauptszenarien werden bewertet. Das erste Szenario ist der konventionelle Plan, wobei die Hersteller dominieren. Dies bedeutet, dass der Hersteller findet seinen eigenen optimalen Job-Scheduling-Plan, während die Distribution versucht mit Hilfe dessen ihren optimalen Plan zu finden. Dadurch erhöhen sich die Distributionskosten. Das zweite Szenario betrifft die Synchronisation der Produktions-, Lagerhaltungs- und Transportzeitpläne. Ein zu diesem Zweck entwickeltes Java-Programm und die Job-Scheduling-Software Simal wurden für die Modellierung der konventionellen und integrierten Szenarien verwendet. Beide Szenarien wurden verglichen und validiert. Die Fallstudie betrachtet mehrere Produkte sowie ein schwer zu planendes flowshop- System. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Gesamtkosten, einschließlich der Einrichtungs-, Lager- und Transportkosten, minimiert werden können, wenn das synchronisierte System angewendet wird.The main cost factors within a supply chain can be put into the categories of production, transportation, and inventory costs. The composition of these operational costs relative to total costs varies largely by industry. However, production cost is the largest of all in almost all the industries, followed by transportation and inventory costs. Optimizing one of these categories without consideration of the others may increase the total cost and reduce the overall performance. This dissertation deals with the production distribution problem of developing synchronized strategies to improve the supply chain performance and to minimize the total cost. A real case study is investigated. This real-life case study is a powder detergent plant located in Libya. There are two main scenarios evaluated. The first scenario is the conventional plan, where the manufacturer dominates. This means the manufacturer finds his own optimum job-scheduling plan, and the distributor tries to find the optimum plan according to it. This will increase the distribution cost. The second scenario involves synchronizing the production, inventory and transportation schedules. A Java program and SimAl (job-schedulingsoftware) were constructed for modelling conventional and integrated scenarios. The two scenarios were compared and validated. The case study considered multiple products and a flowshop system which is difficult to schedule. The results show that the total costs, including setup, inventory and transportation, can be minimized when the synchronized system is applied

Scheduling problems for logistic platforms with fixed staircase component arrivals and various deliveries hypotheses

International audienceThis paper studies the scheduling problem within a logistic platform node. It corresponds to the last node in the supply chain located just before the final customers. In this node, customer orders are prepared using known quantities of components received from the suppliers. For upstream flows, trucks deliver known component quantities at fixed times. For downstream flows, optimized customer delivery tours are planned at fixed times except the last one which will be done at a flexible time corresponding to the end of the schedule. We consider a simplified case of one bottleneck-assembling machine. Several sub cases are considered depending on the number of the fixed and flexible deliveries and also on the chosen criteria. For each sub case, upper and lower bounds are proposed and compared experimentally on heterogeneous instance families. All the ingredients are therefore available to design a branch and bound for these new scheduling problems

Improving just-in-time delivery performance of IoT-enabled flexible manufacturing systems with AGV based material transportation

Autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) are driverless material handling systems used for transportation of pallets and line side supply of materials to provide flexibility and agility in shop-floor logistics. Scheduling of shop-floor logistics in such systems is a challenging task due to their complex nature associated with the multiple part types and alternate material transfer routings. This paper presents a decision support system capable of supporting shop-floor decision-making activities during the event of manufacturing disruptions by automatically adjusting both AGV and machine schedules in Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs). The proposed system uses discrete event simulation (DES) models enhanced by the Internet-of-Things (IoT) enabled digital integration and employs a nonlinear mixed integer programming Genetic Algorithm (GA) to find near-optimal production schedules prioritising the just-in-time (JIT) material delivery performance and energy efficiency of the material transportation. The performance of the proposed system is tested on the Integrated Manufacturing and Logistics (IML) demonstrator at WMG, University of Warwick. The results showed that the developed system can find the near-optimal solutions for production schedules subjected to production anomalies in a negligible time, thereby supporting shop-floor decision-making activities effectively and rapidly

Algorithms for Scheduling Problems

This edited book presents new results in the area of algorithm development for different types of scheduling problems. In eleven chapters, algorithms for single machine problems, flow-shop and job-shop scheduling problems (including their hybrid (flexible) variants), the resource-constrained project scheduling problem, scheduling problems in complex manufacturing systems and supply chains, and workflow scheduling problems are given. The chapters address such subjects as insertion heuristics for energy-efficient scheduling, the re-scheduling of train traffic in real time, control algorithms for short-term scheduling in manufacturing systems, bi-objective optimization of tortilla production, scheduling problems with uncertain (interval) processing times, workflow scheduling for digital signal processor (DSP) clusters, and many more

Improving just-in-time delivery performance of IoT-enabled flexible manufacturing systems with AGV based material transportation

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) are driverless material handling systems used for transportation of pallets and line side supply of materials to provide flexibility and agility in shop-floor logistics. Scheduling of shop-floor logistics in such systems is a challenging task due to their complex nature associated with the multiple part types and alternate material transfer routings. This paper presents a decision support system capable of supporting shop-floor decision-making activities during the event of manufacturing disruptions by automatically adjusting both AGV and machine schedules in Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs). The proposed system uses discrete event simulation (DES) models enhanced by the Internet-of-Things (IoT) enabled digital integration and employs a nonlinear mixed integer programming Genetic Algorithm (GA) to find near-optimal production schedules prioritising the just-in-time (JIT) material delivery performance and energy efficiency of the material transportation. The performance of the proposed system is tested on the Integrated Manufacturing and Logistics (IML) demonstrator at WMG, University of Warwick. The results showed that the developed system can find the near-optimal solutions for production schedules subjected to production anomalies in a negligible time, thereby supporting shop-floor decision-making activities effectively and rapidly

Planning and Scheduling Optimization

Although planning and scheduling optimization have been explored in the literature for many years now, it still remains a hot topic in the current scientific research. The changing market trends, globalization, technical and technological progress, and sustainability considerations make it necessary to deal with new optimization challenges in modern manufacturing, engineering, and healthcare systems. This book provides an overview of the recent advances in different areas connected with operations research models and other applications of intelligent computing techniques used for planning and scheduling optimization. The wide range of theoretical and practical research findings reported in this book confirms that the planning and scheduling problem is a complex issue that is present in different industrial sectors and organizations and opens promising and dynamic perspectives of research and development

Robust dynamic schedule coordination control in the supply chain

International audienceCoordination plays crucial role in supply chain management. In this paper, we extend the existing body of literature on supply chain coordination by representing a robust schedule coordination approach. A hybrid discrete/continuous flow shop supply chain with job shop processes at each supplier stage is studied. For this purpose, the developed scheduling model comprises operations control (for customer order fulfillment dynamics), channel control (production machine and transportation dynamics), resource control (material supply dynamics), and flow control (processing and shipment dynamics) with multiple objectives. Based on the scheduling model, we introduce a robust analysis of schedule coordination in the presence of disruptions in capacities and supply. The application of attainable sets opens a possibility to analyse schedule coordination dynamics under disruptions. The results provide insights of how to integrate the coordination issues into schedule robustness analysis. We exemplify the developed approach for the case of two-stage supply chain coordination, and derive managerial insights for both considered scheduling problem and application of dynamic control methods to supply chain coordination in general

Mathematics in the Supply Chain

[no abstract available

Planning and control of autonomous mobile robots for intralogistics: Literature review and research agenda

Autonomous mobile robots (AMR) are currently being introduced in many intralogistics operations, like manufacturing, warehousing, cross-docks, terminals, and hospitals. Their advanced hardware and control software allow autonomous operations in dynamic environments. Compared to an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system in which a central unit takes control of scheduling, routing, and dispatching decisions for all AGVs, AMRs can communicate and negotiate independently with other resources like machines and systems and thus decentralize the decision-making process. Decentralized decision-making allows the system to react dynamically to changes in the system state and environment. These developments have influenced the traditional methods and decision-making processes for planning and control. This study identifies and classifies research related to the planning and control of AMRs in intralogistics. We provide an extended literature review that highlights how AMR technological advances affect planning and control decisions. We contribute to the literature by introducing an AMR planning and control framework t

Cost Factor Focused Scheduling and Sequencing: A Neoteric Literature Review

The hastily emergent concern from researchers in the application of scheduling and sequencing has urged the necessity for analysis of the latest research growth to construct a new outline. This paper focuses on the literature on cost minimization as a primary aim in scheduling problems represented with less significance as a whole in the past literature reviews. The purpose of this paper is to have an intensive study to clarify the development of cost-based scheduling and sequencing (CSS) by reviewing the work published over several parameters for improving the understanding in this field. Various parameters, such as scheduling models, algorithms, industries, journals, publishers, publication year, authors, countries, constraints, objectives, uncertainties, computational time, and programming languages and optimization software packages are considered. In this research, the literature review of CSS is done for thirteen years (2010-2022). Although CSS research originated in manufacturing, it has been observed that CSS research publications also addressed case studies based on health, transportation, railway, airport, steel, textile, education, ship, petrochemical, inspection, and construction projects. A detailed evaluation of the literature is followed by significant information found in the study, literature analysis, gaps identification, constraints of work done, and opportunities in future research for the researchers and experts from the industries in CSS