conditional lot splitting to avoid setups while reducing flow time时避免设置条件很多分裂减少流时间.pdfVIP

American Journal of Operations Research, 2012, 2, 453-466 /10.4236/ajor.2012.24054 Published Online November 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ajor) Conditional Lot Splitting to Avoid Setups While Reducing Flow Time 1 2 3 1 Jacob V. Simons Jr. , Mark E. Kraus , Willis Mwangola , Gerard Burke 1Department of Management, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, USA 2US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, USA 3Department of Marketing and Logistics, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, USA Email: jsimons@ Received October 2, 2012; revised November 5, 2012; accepted November 12, 2012 ABSTRACT Previous research has clearly and consistently shown that flow time advantages accrue from splitting production lots into smaller transfer batches or sub-lots. Less extensively discussed, and certainly undesired, is the fact that lot splitting may dramatically increase the number of setups required, making it impractical in some settings. This paper describes and demonstrates a primary cause of these “extra” setups. It then proposes and evaluates decision rules which selec- tively invoke lot splitting in an attempt to avoid extra setups. For the closed job shop environment tested, our results indicate that conditional logic can achieve a substantial portion of lot splitting’s flow time improvement while avoiding the vast majority of the additional setups which would be caused by previously tested lot splitting schemes. Keywords: Lot Splitting; Scheduling; Setups; Shop Floor Control; Simulation 1. Introduction through the u