Title: Analysis of a new signal for bottleneck identification and loss allocation to individual machines

Authors: Sankar Sengupta; Tommy White; Kanchan Das; Robert P. Van Til

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Oakland University, 654 Science and Engineering Bldg., Rochester, MI 48309, USA ' Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Oakland University, 654 Science and Engineering Bldg., Rochester, MI 48309, USA ' Department of Technology Systems, Slay Hall 245, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA ' Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Oakland University, 652 Science and Engineering Bldg., Rochester, MI 48309, USA

Abstract: This paper presents a new signal for analysis to identify and rank the bottlenecks in a manufacturing system. The proposed method analyses interdeparture time from different machines to identify and rank the bottlenecks. A simple descriptive measure with good correlation to bottleneck is presented. This research also presents a new method to allocate loss of production to different machines based on the analysis of inter-departure time. In addition, a set of rules that may be used to improve data integrity is presented. The proposed method may be used to analyse both steady-state as well as nonsteady-state system behaviour. The proposed method is applicable to high-volume and low-variety manufacturing systems. Future research issues are discussed.

Keywords: bottleneck identification; bottleneck ranking; loss allocation; manufacturing systems; bottlenecks; production loss; data integrity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2013.051791

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2013 Vol.13 No.2, pp.175 - 196

Published online: 27 Dec 2013 *

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