A Novel Metric for Determining the Constraining Effect of Resources in Manufacturing Simulation

Brian Patrick Kernan (1) , Andrew Lynch (2) , Con Sheahan (3) , Dang Tung (3)

1 Enterprise Research Centre
2 Enterprise Research Centre
3 Manufacturing and Operation Department

This paper provides a novel method for determining the constraining effect of resources in a manufacturing system under simulation. Traditionally manufacturing systems are constrained by one or more bottlenecks. Eliminating or mitigating the bottleneck will improve the whole system. However, bottlenecking resources generally only refer to machines, and primarily focus on flow-shops not job-shops. One important resource we believe that is often overlooked is workers and their associated skills, and we propose that a particular skill could be flagged as a bottleneck resource. We define new metrics known as Resource Constraint Metrics (RCM) for measuring the constraining effect of a resource on the entire manufacturing system. These metrics are robust and differentiate between the constraining effects of machines and their requested skills. The metrics can also deal with complex workflows with alternative routing, alternative resources, calendars (a necessary consideration when dealing with workers), worker performance, and multiple modes of operation of machines (e.g. run, setup, and maintenance). The use of RCMs in simulation aids in real-world decision-making, by determining which resource should be focussed on and improved to reduce the overall system constrainedness. This will have the effect of increasing throughput or at least providing the capacity for increased throughput.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Brian Patrick Kernan, Andrew Lynch, Con Sheahan, Dang Tung. A Novel Metric for Determining the Constraining Effect of Resources in Manufacturing Simulation. International Journal of Production Research, 2010, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00207543.2010.481643⟩. ⟨hal-00605258⟩