Structural properties and a heuristic for Kanban-controlled

Kanban-controlled serial manufacturing systems have been popular in Japan for many years. The analytical intractibility of such systems makes simulation and heuristics essential in studying them. Some theoretical results - reversibility and dominance - are developed, and insight is provided into the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Management science 1993-11, Vol.39 (11), p.1347
Main Author: Tayur, Sridhar R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Heuristic
Just in time
Management science
Manufacturing cells
Process controls
Stochastic models
Studies
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Kanban-controlled serial manufacturing systems have been popular in Japan for many years. The analytical intractibility of such systems makes simulation and heuristics essential in studying them. Some theoretical results - reversibility and dominance - are developed, and insight is provided into their behavior. These structural results also provide the basis for developing heuristics to deal effectively with particular cases. Reversibility deals with certain permutations of the machines; dominance deals with the allocation of kanbans to cells. In addition, it is shown that if the goal is to maximize the throughput with a given total fixed number of cards, all the machines should be placed in a single cell. These structural results hold in general because no assumptions are made on the processing time distribution of the machines, the number of cells, the total number of kanbans, or whether or not the machines are identical. Based on the structural results, a heuristic is also developed for the allocation of kanbans to a balanced line. An implementation of this model at a laminate manufacturing plant is described.
ISSN:0025-1909
1526-5501