Title: Integration of procurement and production scheduling in flexible flow-line assembly

Authors: PL.K. Palaniappan, N. Jawahar

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai 625 015, Tamil Nadu, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai 625 015, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: Flexible flow-line manufacturing is being adopted by the manufacturers to produce an increased number of variations or models of an end product in order to meet customers| preferences and demand. This paper addresses a sequence dependent flexible flow-line assembly, which is commonly witnessed in the manufacturing of automobile, computer, home-appliances, etc. A model that integrates procurement and production scheduling is developed with the objective of minimising Integrated Total Cost (ITC), which includes assembly, switchover, material, inventory and shortage costs. A new sequencing heuristic algorithm for the above model is proposed by modifying the single-period flow-shop sequencing heuristic. The performance of proposed sequencing heuristic algorithm in the flexible flow-line assembly involving multi periods is analysed using the base sequences generated with four popular single-period sequencing heuristic algorithms.

Keywords: procurement; sequencing heuristics; flow shop scheduling; flow-line assembly; flexible assembly; integrated total cost.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISM.2010.035642

International Journal of Integrated Supply Management, 2010 Vol.5 No.4, pp.344 - 364

Published online: 01 Oct 2010 *

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