Title: Virtual cells: evaluation of different lot sizing splitting strategies

Authors: Shih Y. Chin

Addresses: Department of Production Engineering, Technological Federal University of Paraná, km 4 Av. Monteiro Lobato, Ponta Grossa, CEP: 84016-210, Brazil

Abstract: The main goal of this research work is to present a performance comparison of different lot sizing splitting strategies applied to virtual cells in a robust distributed layout. This paper considers basically three strategies related to lot sizing splitting, analysing firstly the performance of the production system without any lot sizing splitting. Next, considers an equally balanced of lot sizing to K virtual cells. And finally, unbalanced splitting is considered, where in this last case, it is proposed a makespan based procedure for determining different part quantities to each virtual cells. For the computational simulation, the sequences in which different parts are submitted for manufacturing (parts input orderings) are also considered. The results show that separating parts to virtual cells reduces significantly, in general, the makespan. The performance of the proposed method increases when the total number of machines and part input orderings are embedded in the analysis. [Received 21 April 2011; Revised 16 September 2011; Accepted 6 January 2012]

Keywords: lot sizing splitting; input part orderings; performance comparison; distributed layout; cell layout; virtual cells; simulation; manufacturing cells; genetic algorithms; GAs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMR.2013.051838

International Journal of Manufacturing Research, 2013 Vol.8 No.1, pp.18 - 42

Published online: 29 Jan 2014 *

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