Optimization of production control policies in failure-prone homogenous transfer lines

Philippe Lavoie, Jean-Pierre Kenné and Ali Gharbi

IISE Transactions, 2009, vol. 41, issue 3, 209-222

Abstract: The production control of homogenous transfer lines with machines that are prone to failure is considered in terms of inventory and backlog costs. Because problem complexity grows with line size, a heuristic method based on the profile of the distribution of buffer capacities in moderate size lines is developed in order to enable the optimization of long lines. A method consisting of an analytical formalism, combined discrete/continuous simulation modeling, design of experiments and response surface methodology is used to optimize a set of transfer lines, with one parameter per machine, for up to seven machines. A profile in the parameter distribution which can be modeled using four-parameters is observed. Consequently, the optimization problem is reduced to four parameters, in turn greatly reducing the required optimization effort. An example of a 20-machine line, optimized at 130 runs, versus 5243 090 runs that would be necessary to solve the 20-parameter problem, is presented to illustrate the usefulness of the parameterized profile.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07408170802375760 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:uiiexx:v:41:y:2009:i:3:p:209-222

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uiie20

DOI: 10.1080/07408170802375760

Access Statistics for this article

IISE Transactions is currently edited by Jianjun Shi

More articles in IISE Transactions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().