Placement of Effective Work-In-Progress Limits in Route-Specific Unit-Based Pull Systems.

Nick Ziengs (1) , Jan Riezebos (2) , Remco Germs (2)

1 Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Operations
2 Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Operations

Unit-based pull systems control the throughput time of orders in a production system by limiting the number of orders on the shop floor. In production systems where orders can follow different routings on the shop floor, route-specific pull systems that control the progress of orders on the shop floor by placing limits on the number of orders in (parts of) a routing, have shown to be effective in controlling throughput times. This is because route-specific pull systems are able to create a balanced distribution of the amount of work on the shop floor, which leads to shorter and more reliable throughput times. The placement of limits on work-in-progress in a route-specific pull system determines to a large extend the workload balancing capability of such a system. This paper shows how the placement of work-in-progress limits affects the workload balancing capability and thereby the throughput time performance of a route-specific unit-based pull system, namely POLCA.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Nick Ziengs, Jan Riezebos, Remco Germs. Placement of Effective Work-In-Progress Limits in Route-Specific Unit-Based Pull Systems.. International Journal of Production Research, 2011, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00207543.2011.590537⟩. ⟨hal-00736794⟩