Title: Reliability-oriented multi-resource allocation for seru production system with stochastic capacity

Authors: Xinzi Han; Zhe Zhang; Yong Yin

Addresses: School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China ' School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China ' Graduate School of Business, Doshisha University, Karasuma-Imadegawa, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan

Abstract: Seru production system, which can meet the demands characterised by varied product assortment and fluctuant volumes in Japanese production practice, consists of several serus where the capacity of each seru is not certain but stochastic. Therefore, the capacity of each seru has multiple operational states. In this situation, the system reliability is an important issue to evaluate the performance of this new type production mode. The reliability in this paper is defined as the probability that a seru production system with stochastic capacity can satisfy the given demands within a fixed period, and a resource allocation problem in a stochastic-flow network, i.e., how to allocate various resources to each seru from a reliable angle, is formulated to maximise the system reliability. An efficient solution method is designed according to the characteristic of network, and two cases are given to illustrate the proposed model and solution method. [Submitted 24 January 2019; Accepted 7 May 2019]

Keywords: seru production system; reliability; resource allocation; stochastic capacity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMR.2020.110517

International Journal of Manufacturing Research, 2020 Vol.15 No.4, pp.371 - 386

Received: 24 Jan 2019
Accepted: 07 May 2019
Published online: 22 Oct 2020 *

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