Benefits of Chaining Configuration in Flezible Manufacturing System with Setup Times
In flexibility investment literature, it has been recognized that limited flexibility, represented by a single long chaining configuration, can achieve almost the same performance as total flexibility configuration, when setup times are not taken into account. However, actually flexibility benefits are significantly affected by setup times, if they are not negligible. In this paper, we consider the evaluation of flexibility benefits for a manufacturing system considering setup times. When the demand of each product is discrete, independent and symmetrically distributed, we analytically measure the benefits of flexibility, i.e. the increased expected sales of a 2-skill chaining (2-SC) configuration than that of a rigid configuration. It is proved that the benefits of flexibility increase with the magnitude of demand fluctuation and decreases with setup times. For given demand distribution and setup times, the optimal length (i.e. the number of products or plants) of a 2-SC configuration which brings the maximal increased expected sales is determined. Therefore, when the number of products or plants is larger than the optimal chain length, it is better to invest multiple short chains than a single long chain in the manufacturing system. Numerical examples illustrate the validity of the main results.
flezible manufacturing system 2-skill chaining configuration setup times chain length
Zhen Chen Ping He
School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China
国际会议
The Ninth Wuhan International Conference on E-Business(第九届武汉电子商务国际会议)
武汉
英文
2441-2447
2010-05-29（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）