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A study which details aspects of material flow in manufacturing systems. This text focuses on the effects of unreliability, variability, and finite storage space on system performance; and control-theoretic methods for operating advanced manufacturing systems to obtain high performance.
Drawn from a conference honoring Gerald L. Thompson, the pioneer of operations research, this volume brings together some of the latest writings of major figures in the field. The volume is divided into four parts: the first part reviews the career and significance of Thompson, the second concentrates on linear and nonlinear optimization, the third looks at network and integer programming, and the fourth provides examples of applications-oriented research in manufacturing. This volume will be an invaluable resource for all scholars and researchers involved in theory and methodology in operations research and management science.
This sequel to volume 19 of Handbook on Statistics on Stochastic Processes: Modelling and Simulation is concerned mainly with the theme of reviewing and, in some cases, unifying with new ideas the different lines of research and developments in stochastic processes of applied flavour. This volume consists of 23 chapters addressing various topics in stochastic processes. These include, among others, those on manufacturing systems, random graphs, reliability, epidemic modelling, self-similar processes, empirical processes, time series models, extreme value therapy, applications of Markov chains, modelling with Monte Carlo techniques, and stochastic processes in subjects such as engineering, telecommunications, biology, astronomy and chemistry. particular with modelling, simulation techniques and numerical methods concerned with stochastic processes. The scope of the project involving this volume as well as volume 19 is already clarified in the preface of volume 19. The present volume completes the aim of the project and should serve as an aid to students, teachers, researchers and practitioners interested in applied stochastic processes.
This book provides a complete overview of production systems and describes the best approaches to analyze their performance. Written by experts in the field, this work also presents numerous techniques that can be used to describe, model, and optimize the performance of various types of production lines. The book is intended for researchers, production managers, and graduate students in industrial, mechanical, and systems engineering.
In production systems there are often capacity oriented performance objectives, like a desired total throughput, a desired average throughput time and average work in-process. Such performance objectives are expressed in "units of products" rather than in specific product types. This book presents a way of modeling and analyzing production systems so, that such capacity oriented performance criteria can be measured in a simple way. The model consists of three basic elements. 1. The product types in the system are aggregated. 2. The product flow is modeled as being continuous. 3. The machines in the model have a finite number of states. Each state has a phase-type sojourn distribution and an ...
Flow line design is one of the major tasks in production management. The decision to install a set of machines and buffers is often highly irreversible. It determines both cost and revenue to a large extent. In order to assess the economic impact of any possible flow line design, production rates and inventory levels have to be estimated. These performance measures depend on the allocation of buffers whenever the flow of material is occasionally disrupted, for example due to machine failures or quality problems. The book describes analytical methods that can be used to evaluate flow lines much faster than with simulation techniques. Based on these fast analytical techniques, it is possible to determine a flow line design that maximizes the net present value of the flow line investment. The flow of material through the line may be non-linear, for example due to assembly operations or quality inspections.
Manufacturing industries are devoted to producing high-quality products in the most economical and timely manner. Quality, economics, and time not only indicate the customer-satisfaction level, but also measure the manufacturing per formance of a company. Today's manufacturing environments are becoming more and more complex, flexible, and information-intensive. Companies invest into the information technologies such as computers, communication networks, sensors, actuators, and other equipment that give them an abundance of information about their materials and resources. In the face of global competition, a manufacturing company's survival is becoming more dependent on how best this influx o...
Reflects exact and heuristic methods of scheduling techniques suitable for creating customized sequencing and scheduling systems for flexible manufacturing, project management, group and cellular manufacturing operations. Summarizes complex computational studies demonstrating how they work in practice. Contains new theories and techniques developed by the author. Includes a software disk to reinforce and practice the methods described.