A Synthesis of Decision Models for Tool Management in Automated Manufacturing

Ann E. Gray, Abraham Seidmann and Kathryn E. Stecke
Additional contact information
Ann E. Gray: Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Boston, Massachusetts 02163
Abraham Seidmann: The William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627
Kathryn E. Stecke: School of Business Administration, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109

Management Science, 1993, vol. 39, issue 5, 549-567

Abstract: The evidence is clear that a lack of attention to structured tool management has resulted in the poor performance of many manufacturing systems. Plant tooling systems affect product design options, machine loading, job batching, capacity scheduling, and real-time part routing decisions. With increasing automation in manufacturing systems, there is a growing need to integrate tool management more thoroughly into system design, planning and control. This paper critically evaluates various tool management approaches, identifying the operational tradeoffs and analyzing the models developed to address management decisions involving tooling. These decisions range from selecting the optimal machining parameters and the most economic processing rate for a particular operation, to the loading of tools and jobs on machines and the determination of the optimal tool-mix inventories needed for a particular production schedule. We present an integrated conceptual framework for resource planning to examine how tool management issues, depending upon their scope, can be classified into tool-level, machine-level, and system-level concerns. This framework specifies how decisions made at one level constrain those at lower levels, and how information from lower levels feeds back to higher level decisions. The framework structures our critical evaluation of the modeling approaches found in the academic literature and points to promising directions for future research.

Keywords: flexible manufacturing systems; production planning; CIM; performance evaluation; automated manufacturing systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.39.5.549 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:39:y:1993:i:5:p:549-567

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().