Heuristics for selecting machines and determining buffer capacities in assembly systems

This paper considers a design problem of assembly systems consisting of stations and buffers that connect the stations. We present a solution procedure for finding the minimum cost configuration which gives a desired throughput rate for an assembly system. The configuration is defined by the machines to be used in stations (machine configuration) and capacities of buffers. Three heuristics are proposed, which simultaneously select the machines to be used in the stations and determine the capacities of the buffers. These heuristics start from an initial configuration such as a lower configuration, which consists of less efficient machines and large size buffers, or an upper configuration, which consists of more efficient machines and small size buffers. Then, the heuristics search for a near optimal solution by repeatedly generating promising machine configurations and determining (near) optimal buffer sizes for the machine configurations. Results of computational experiments show that the proposed heuristics give relatively good configurations in a reasonable amount of time.

[1]  Yushin Hong,et al.  Heuristic algorithms for buffer allocation in a production line with unreliable machines , 1995 .

[2]  J. George Shanthikumar,et al.  Determination of Optimal Buffer Storage Capacities and Optimal Allocation in Multistage Automatic Transfer Lines , 1989 .

[3]  G. E. Martin.  Optimal design of production lines , 1994 .

[4]  Dennis E. Blumenfeld,et al.  Assembly system design principles and tradeoffs , 1994 .

[5]  Stephen G. Powell.  BUFFER ALLOCATION IN UNBALANCED THREE-STATION SERIAL LINES , 1994 .

[6]  Maria Di Mascolo,et al.  Modeling and Analysis of Assembly Systems with Unreliable Machines and Finite Buffers , 1991 .

[7]  Donald F. Towsley,et al.  Acyclic fork-join queuing networks , 1989, JACM.

[8]  J. Shanthikumar,et al.  Concavity of the throughput of tandem queueing systems with finite buffer storage space , 1990, Advances in Applied Probability.

[9]  Chih-Ming Liu,et al.  Stochastic design optimization of asynchronous flexible assembly systems , 1988 .

[10]  Stanley B. Gershwin,et al.  Manufacturing Systems Engineering , 1993 .

[11]  Yu-Chi Ho,et al.  A gradient technique for general buffer storage design in a production line , 1979 .

[12]  Keun-Chae Jeong,et al.  Performance analysis of assembly/disassembly systems with unreliable machines and random processing times , 1997 .

[13]  Frederick S. Hillier,et al.  Toward characterizing the optimal allocation of storage space in production line systems with variable processing times , 1993 .

[14]  M. W. Rohrer,et al.  Allocation of Buffer Capacities for a Class of Fixed Cycle Production Lines , 1979 .

[15]  H. G. Perros,et al.  Approximate analysis of a closed fork/join model , 1991 .

[16]  Yves Dallery,et al.  Manufacturing flow line systems: a review of models and analytical results , 1992, Queueing Syst. Theory Appl..

[17]  Pantelis Tsoucas,et al.  Concavity of Throughput in Series of Queues with Finite Buffers. , 1989 .

[18]  Tadeusz Czachórski,et al.  Performance evaluation of fork and join synchronization primitives , 1987, Acta Informatica.

[19]  Tayfur Altiok,et al.  The Allocation of Interstage Buffer Capacities in Production Lines , 1983 .

[20]  Taeho Park,et al.  A two-phase heuristic algorithm for determining buffer sizes of production lines , 1993 .

[21]  Pravin K. Johri,et al.  Engineering a circuit board assembly line for a desired capacity and flowtime , 1991 .

[22]  James MacGregor Smith,et al.  Buffer Space Allocation in Automated Assembly Lines , 1988, Oper. Res..

[23]  Yves Dallery,et al.  An efficient method to determine the optimal configuration of a flexible manufacturing system , 1988 .

[24]  Stanley B. Gershwin,et al.  Assembly/Disassembly Systems: An Efficient Decomposition Algorithm for Tree-Structured Networks , 1991 .