Conservation of filtering in manufacturing systems with unreliable machines and finished goods buffers.pdfVIP

CONSERVATION OF FILTERING IN MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS WITH UNRELIABLE MACHINES AND FINISHED GOODS BUFFERS JINGSHAN LI, E. ENGINARLAR, AND SEMYON M. MEERKOV Received 22 April 2005; Accepted 22 April 2005 This paper addresses the issue of reliable satisfaction of customer demand by unreliable production systems. In the framework of a simple production-storage-customer model, we show that this can be accomplished by using an appropriate level of filtering of pro- duction randomness. The filtering is ensured by finished goods buffers (filtering in space) and shipping periods (filtering in time). The following question is considered: how are filtering in space and filtering in time interrelated? As an answer, we show that there exists a conservation law: in lean manufacturing systems, the amount of filtering in space mul- tiplied by the amount of filtering in time (both measured in appropriate dimensionless units) is practically constant. Along with providing an insight into the nature of manu- facturing systems, this law offers a tool for selecting the smallest, that is, lean, finished goods buffering, which is necessary and sufficient to ensure the desired level of customer demand satisfaction. Copyright © 2006 Jingshan Li et al . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1. Introduction Manufacturing systems with unreliable machines usually contain finished goods buffers (FGB) intended to filter out production randomness and, thereby, ensure reliable satis- faction of customer demand. “Filtering in space,” provided by FGBs, is complemented by “filtering in time,” offered by shipping periods. For a given shipping period and shipment size, the smallest FGB capacity, which ensures the desired level of customer demand sat- isfaction, is referred to as lean. The question addressed in this pa