Tooling constraints and shop floor scheduling: A simulation study

Research into the problems of job shop scheduling has dealt with two of three major categories of shop floor resources: machine capacity and labor. Generally ignored has been the impact of tooling constraints, the third form of shop floor resource, on the scheduling process. The impact of tooling is...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of operations management 1989-04, Vol.8 (2), p.69-89
Main Authors: Melnyk, Steven A., Ghosh, Soumen, Ragatz, Gary L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Impacts
Job shops
Machine tools
Production capacity
Production planning
Production scheduling
Simulation
Statistical analysis
Studies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Research into the problems of job shop scheduling has dealt with two of three major categories of shop floor resources: machine capacity and labor. Generally ignored has been the impact of tooling constraints, the third form of shop floor resource, on the scheduling process. The impact of tooling is the focus of this study. Using a simple simulation model of a shop operating under varying levels of tooling availability, it is shown that the level of tooling availability has a significant impact on shop floor performance as measured in terms of mean flow time, mean tardiness, number jobs tardy and number of tool changes. Four different tooling assignment rules are evaluated and their effect on system performance is described. The results indicate that tooling assignment rules should consider both job priorities and tooling availability in order to achieve good shop performance. The paper concludes with general recommendations for the management of shop orders facing limited tooling availability.
ISSN:0272-6963
1873-1317
DOI:10.1016/0272-6963(89)90013-2