Bottleneck Resource Allocation in Manufacturing

Anantaram Balakrishan, Richard L. Francis and Stephen J. Grotzinger
Additional contact information
Anantaram Balakrishan: Smeal College of Business Administration, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802
Richard L. Francis: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611
Stephen J. Grotzinger: 6 Baris Lane, Hopewell Junction, New York 12533

Management Science, 1996, vol. 42, issue 11, 1611-1625

Abstract: Many resource-allocation problems in manufacturing and service operations require selecting integer-valued levels for various activities that consume "nondecreasing amounts" of limited resources. System productivity, to be maximized, is limited by the least productive (bottleneck) activity. We first review a basic bisection method that can solve this discrete, monotonic resource-allocation problem even with a nonlinear objective and constraints. We then generalize the basic algorithm to solve an enhanced version of the problem containing additional coupling constraints on the allocation decisions. This generalization applies to assembly-release planning (ARP) in a multiproduct assemble-to-forecast environment with part commonality. The ARP problem requires deciding the number of kits for each product to release for assembly in every time period, using the available parts, to achieve if possible the target service levels for all products and time periods or minimize the maximum deviation of the actual service levels from the targets. We also consider extensions of the ARP model incorporating precedence constraints and part substitutability, and show how to modify the bisection method to solve these problems.

Keywords: production planning; commonality; part substitutions; electronics manufacturing; min-max optimization; bisection search (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.42.11.1611 (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:42:y:1996:i:11:p:1611-1625

Access Statistics for this article

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