Title: Real-time buffer management method for DBR scheduling

Authors: Kiyun Woo, Soonyoung Park, Shigeru Fujimura

Addresses: Graduate School of Information, Production and System, Waseda University, Kitakyushu-shi, Fukuoka, Japan. ' Korean Agency for Technology and Standards, Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Republic of Korea. ' Graduate School of Information, Production and systems, Waseda University, Kitakyushu-shi, Fukuoka, Japan

Abstract: This paper proposed the real-time buffer management method which extends the concept of |buffer| by using Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR) scheduling technique of Theory of Constraints (TOC) according to real-time information. The current DBR buffer is used to supervise ascertain whether the product in the last stage of the production process, stages managed by the buffer, has arrived. If the product has not arrived the warning sign continues to be emitted and the check action for that situation is left to the operators. The problem arises when a meaningless warning sign is emitted for too long and it affects the operators. The mechanism proposed in this paper suppresses the meaningless warnings by using the detailed schedule information provided by the on-site operators and actual result information obtained by the on-site instruments.

Keywords: theory of constraints; TOC; drum-buffer-rope; DBR; capacity constrained resources; CCR buffers; shipping buffer; buffer management; scheduling; real time.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMTM.2009.021503

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2009 Vol.16 No.1/2, pp.42 - 57

Published online: 30 Nov 2008 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article