A New Performance Indicator of Material Flow for Production Systems

Abstract This research develops a new performance indicator for material flow effectiveness in production systems. The so-called flow value can represent the smoothness of material flow in a production system, thus can be used as real time indicator to instantly reveal the performance of a production system. A simulation study on a machining equipment manufacturing company in Taiwan validates the usefulness of using flow value as an indicator of material flow performance. This flow value is also capable of revealing areas where improvement can be made to effectively improve total system's performance in terms of material flow.