Single-batch lot streaming in a two-stage assembly system

Abstract

Abstract:We address a single-batch lot streaming problem for a two-stage assembly system. The first stage consists of m parallel subassembly machines, each devoted to a component type. A single assembly machine at the second stage assembles a unit of a product after all m components (one each from the subassembly machines) are ready. The batch consists of U units. Detached or attached setups are necessary before the start of the first item on each machine. Given a fixed maximal number of sublots, the problem is to determine integer sublot sizes to minimise the makespan. We present a polynomial-time algorithm to obtain an optimal solution Keywords: scheduling; lot streaming; two-stage assembly system; makespan; setup; line of balance.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Sarin, S.C., Yao, L. and Dan, T. (2011) 'Single-batch lot streaming in a two-stage assembly system', Int. J. Planning and Scheduling, Vol. 1, Nos. 1/2, pp.90-108.Biographical notes: Subhash C. Sarin is Paul T. Norton Endowed Professor in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. His areas of research and teaching interests are in production scheduling, applied mathematical programming, and design and analysis of manufacturing systems. He has published several papers in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research journals, has co-authored two books in the production scheduling area, and has served on the editorial boards of many journals. He is recipient of several prestigious awards at the university, state and national levels. Dan Trietsch, PhD (Summa Cum Laude, Tel Aviv University), MBA (Cum Laude, Tel Aviv University), BSME (Technion) is a professor of industrial engineering at American University of Armenia. He has authored and co-authored research and books on optimal network design (generalised Euclidean Steiner Trees), highway and highway network design, project purchasing under stochastic lead times, lot splitting, scheduling hub airports, statistical quality control, and stochastic scheduling subject to optimal service level. His recent co-authored work presents and validates PERT 21, a simple but powerful stochastic scheduling engine for PERT, featuring the Parkinson distribution with a lognormal core and history-based parameters.

Scheduling with lot streaming in a two-machine re-entrant flow shop

“…Besides the studies mentioned above, lot streaming studies for other two-and three-machine manufacturing shops are scarce. There are studies considering open shops (Şen & Benli, 1999), hybrid flow shops (Kim et al, 1997;Zhang et al, 2003;Zhang et al, 2005;Liu, 2008;Defersha, 2011;Defersha & Chen, 2012a;Naderi & Yazdani, 2015;Cheng et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2019;Li et al, 2020), and mixed shops (Çetinkaya & Duman, 2010), job shops (Buscher & Shen, 2009;Defersha & Chen, 2012b), and assembly shops (Sarin et al, 2011;Yao & Sarin, 2014;Nejati et al, 2016;Cheng & Sarin, 2020).…”