Title: Manufacturing competitiveness assessment for business excellence

Authors: Ateekh-Ur-Rehman, A. Subash Babu

Addresses: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai-400 076, Mumbai, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai-400 076, Mumbai, India

Abstract: A manufacturing system is considered, which produces 30 products using 17 conventional machines and different process plans for each product. The system accepts customer orders for any combination of these products. These orders received from time to time may relate to different combinations of the products of varying quantities. The system is simulated using ProModel 6.2 and the exercise helped in quantifying how the manufacturing system would perform under different scenarios characterised by the combinations of various operational features. The performance of the system is measured using performance measures such as machine utilisation, throughput time, product earliness, product lateness and product block time. Nine different alternative configurations were developed and simulated. A benchmarking exercise was performed using simulated results. The analysis led to some interesting inferences, which appear to extend good support to reconfigurable manufacturing system literature. The details of the simulation model, analysis of the results and the inferences drawn are presented in this paper.

Keywords: reconfiguration; reconfigurable manufacturing systems; RMS; benchmarking; ProModel 6.2; manufacturing competitiveness; competitiveness assessment; business excellence; simulation; performance measurement; machine utilisation; throughput time; product earliness; product lateness; product block time.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2008.017882

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2008 Vol.1 No.3, pp.231 - 261

Published online: 21 Apr 2008 *

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