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Int. J.

Production Economics 69 (2001) 39}48

Performance analysis of a batch production system with limited #exibility


A. Claudio Garavelli*
Universita di Lecce, Via Monteroni, 74100 Lecce, Italy % Received 6 April 1998; accepted 23 March 2000

Abstract The concept of limited #exibility, originally applied to production planning, has shown that many bene"ts of totally #exible systems can be obtained by less #exible systems. This concept is here applied to shop #oor control. Limited #exibility is considered as a particular routing #exibility that allows system resources to process some products according to a logic chain, as an intermediate con"guration between a totally #exible system (where every resource can process every product) and a non-#exible system (dedicated resources). A simulation study is carried out to measure the system performance such as the lead time and work-in-process for di!erent system con"gurations, with variable demand, setup times and processing times. ( 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Limited #exibility; Batch production; Performance; Simulation

1. Introduction The increase of customer requirements, for instance, in terms of demand variability and di!erentiation, together with the sti!ening of competition, forces many manufacturing companies to be #exible and innovative. In particular, a large number of products variable in volumes and mix has to be provided, without neglecting cost competition. In fact, #exibility has to be pursued together with scale economies, as stated by `mass customizationa [1]. The search for system #exibility, agility and versatility on the one hand, and of high volumes and low costs on the other, have led to modi"cations in

* Correspondence address: Universita della Basilicata, Via della Tecnica 3, 85100 Potenza, Italy. E-mail address: garavelli@.unile.it (A. Claudio Garavelli).

the design and production activities as well as in the supply management. For instance, design modularity and quick response are some of the devices pursued by the manufacturing companies. From the operations management point of view, batch production systems are among the most interesting in the search for a competitive trade-o! between cost and #exibility. Job shop and cellular organization are the usual manufacturing systems adopted to perform batch production. In particular, in cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) parts that have similar processing needs are grouped into part families, and machines that meet these needs into machine cells. When part families can be manufactured by cells, group technology allows to reduce the setup time, throughput time and work-in-process. In this case, technical and economic bene"ts, such as improved productivity, part quality and operations control, arise.

0925-5273/01/$ - see front matter ( 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 2 5 - 5 2 7 3 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 4 3 - 8

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However, despite many performance improvements, some disadvantages (such as lower machine and labor utilization and other performance decrease) can make the production system design and management more complex, especially when the environment is a!ected by high uncertainty. For instance, demand variability and resource dependability can force management to adopt more #exible manufacturing organizations, such as job shops, which can better deal with uncertainty [2]. Many studies (for instance [3}5]) have addressed the bene"ts and the costs of cellular manufacturing systems and job shop in di!erent scenarios, for instance, depending on the performance analyzed (e.g., lead time and system utilization) and on the ranges assumed by various parameters (e.g., product volume and mix variability, setup and processing time, machine dedication, batch size, loading rule). The discrepancy between the empirical and model-based studies on this topic has also been stressed [6]. A combination of the typical job shop #exibility with the cellular systems productivity has then to be searched. Two ways, in particular, can be addressed to improve batch production system performance: designing hybrid con"gurations between cells and job shop or increasing CMS #exibility. Referring to hybrid production systems, many studies on di!erent production system con"gurations have been proposed to "nd trade-o!s between CMS and job shops (for instance [7,8]), including `virtuala cellular manufacturing [9]. On the other side, the CMS #exibility can be increased, for instance, by the system routing #exibility, i.e. the ability to use alternative product routes inside a cell (intracell #ow) or to route products to cells o!ering the same processes (intercell #ow) [10]. Routing #exibility allows to properly respond to a changing environment, so that the possibility of switching products to di!erent cells in the case of environmental changes can reduce the negative impact of variability on the system performance [11]. Routing #exibility bene"ts can balance the cost of additional instructions, skills, material handling, tools and "xtures, as well as the increased setup times and work in process of routing #exibility implementation. However, solving demand #uctuation problems by transferring work-load from

congested resources to other less congested ones involves some disadvantages, as it has been shown by Ang and Willey [7]. First, extra costs of material handling are incurred; second, work #ow simplicity is lost and the costs of production planning and scheduling are increased; third, the number of components being processed only by a cell is reduced and job satisfaction associated with task identity and task signi"cance may diminish. Ang and Willey [7] have shown that only a limited use of intercell work-load transfer is expected to improve shop performance with a small increase of scheduling e!ort. Ideally, it is preferred that a product family is completely processed by a cell. Since this is hard to be accomplished for all the families, studies based on cluster analysis, in most instances, have focused on minimizing total intercell moves [12]. Given that the resources associated to the route implementations are usually expensive, it is often not economic to implement more than few routes per product. The trade-o! between productivity and #exibility needs then to be investigated. In this paper, the concept of limited #exibility, proposed in the literature in a multi-plant production planning context [13], is applied to the shop #oor management. Limited #exibility is considered here as a particular intercellular routing #exibility allowing some resources (cells) to process some product family according to a logic chain. In particular, products and resources are chained by a minimum number of links and forming the longest close loop. This chain can provide many typical bene"ts of a totally #exible system (where every resource can process every family, as in a job shop) and of a non-#exible system (where every resource is dedicated to just one family). Di!erently from the demand assignment problem [14], focused on a static simulation study with the optimization of resource utilization and lost sales performance, in this paper a dynamic simulation study is carried out to measure system performance such as lead time and work-in-process for di!erent system con"gurations, with variable demand, setup times, processing times. In particular, the comparison between the limited #exibility and the two extremes of totally #exible and non-#exible system con"gurations are investigated.

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2. The simulation model The impact of di!erent #exibility degrees in a batch production system is investigated by a simulation study. The study analyzes the behavior of a production system characterized by three different degrees of #exibility (total #exibility, limited #exibility and no-#exibility), each corresponding to a di!erent system con"guration. These con"gurations are investigated varying the operating level (i.e., the ratio between the mean demand volume and the mean production capacity) of the production system. Each system con"guration is made of similar resources (e.g., cells or workstations), with the same number of resources and product families. Both resources and product families can be considered as `black boxesa, so that it is not necessary to make any assumption about the composition of a family (in terms of product mix and process variability) and on the characteristics of the resource (single machine or group of interconnected machines). Once a product batch is assigned to a resource, intercellular moves are not allowed, as in a set of parallel manufacturing cells [15]. Batches are considered as lots of products of the same family, made of a given number of products. The variability of this parameter is not considered in this paper.

A scheme of the three di!erent system con"gurations is reported in Fig. 1, with "ve product families and "ve resources. In each con"guration, the number of resources that can work the same product family changes. In case a, each resource can work only one product family, because there are no links among the resources, which are family-dedicated. In case b, the total #exibility (i.e. complete routing #exibility) allows every resource to process every product family, after the eventual correspondent setup. Finally, in case c, a product family can be assigned only to a limited number of resources (in this case, only to two resources), according to the limited #exibility principles [12]. In fact, a closed chain between products and resources is de"ned, with the same number of products and resources connected with each other. In the simulation model, product families enter the system according to a stochastic generation modeled by an exponential distribution. Varying the mean rate of the arrival distribution (demand volume) yields di!erent values of the operating level. The demand mix is de"ned by the assignment of a family-code to each product batch entering the system. This assignment is modeled by a discrete probability distribution, where each product family has the same probability to be selected. This

Fig. 1. Production system con"gurations.

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stochastic assignment allows to have a variable demand mix in the system, but with a constant mean. Processing times are modeled by exponential distributions. The same mean rate is considered for all the product families to avoid the e!ect of di!erent mean service times on the comparison of di!erent system con"gurations. When a product family is assigned to a resource that can work di!erent product families, a deterministic setup time is added, if the previous product family processed by that resource was di!erent. The service rule adopted by a resource to process the products in its queue is the "rst-in "rst-out. One of the critical aspects of the system is the dispatching rule adopted to assign each product family to a resource. In fact, if the product families are randomly assigned to the resources of a #exible system, setup penalties can signi"cantly a!ect the system performance. To make a fair comparison among the di!erent system con"gurations, #exibility should then be driven by more appropriate dispatching rules, in order to limit the negative e!ect of setups on system performance. To this aim, the following dispatching rule is considered. A dedicated resource is set for every product family, so that a product batch entering the system is assigned to its dedicated resource, unless the product queue of that resource exceeds a given threshold. If that threshold is reached, the batch is assigned to the resource which can process that product family (depending on the system con"guration), and has the shortest queue of products waiting. To show the e!ect of this rule on system performance, di!erent values of the threshold TV are considered (TV"3 and 10). Besides these threshold values, main parameters of the model are the operating level and the setup time. Their values are chosen according to previous studies on this argument [2,8]. The operating levels considered are 60%, 70%, 80% and 90%. The setup time is considered equal to 0% or 30% of the total processing time. In addition, two dimensions of the production system are considered, in order to investigate if the number N of resources and product families a!ects system performance, with N"5 and 10, respectively. The performances investigated are the average lead time and the average work-in-process, to-

gether with the average resource utilization. To obtain comparable results in the three di!erent system con"gurations, the same number seed has been introduced in all the stochastic distributions. The e!ect of the dispatching rule (i.e. of the two threshold values TV) has been analyzed "rst, referring to the case of a system with "ve resources and product families (N"5), in the particular condition of negligible setup times (ST"0) (Section 3). Then, the in#uence of the setup time is investigated, referring to the value of ST"30% of the processing time (Section 4). Finally, some considerations are provided in relation to the system dimension increase to N"10 (Section 5).

3. System performance with negligible setup times: the e4ect of the dispatching rule If all the resources of a production system could process any product family with no penalty in terms of setup times for any product shift (ST"0), no doubt that a totally #exible con"guration of resources, allowing the assignment of any product to any resource (in particular, to that with the shortest queue), would provide the best system performance. This consideration is still valid if every product family is assigned to a dedicated resource, according to the threshold dispatching rule considered above. In this case, however, #exible systems are penalized by the fact that, to exploit the bene"ts of #exibility, the products in the queues waiting to be processed by di!erent resources have to reach at least a threshold value to let the new products entering the system be probably assigned to other less loaded resources. In Fig. 2, the average lead time (LT) and workin-process (WIP) are reported for di!erent values of the operating level, for a system made of "ve resources and product families (N"5), with negligible setup times (ST"0) and two threshold values (3 and 10). In these cases, due to ST"0, the average system utilization does not vary and is equal to the operating level. As we can see in Fig. 2, the three con"gurations are always ordered with the total #exibility ahead, followed by the limited #exibility and the

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Fig. 2. System performance with ST"0.

no-#exibility con"gurations. In particular, the performance of the non-#exible con"guration (which can be determined analytically) is the worst one, due to the absence of possible assignments of the products to non-dedicated resources, which does not allow a dynamic redistribution of the work-load. As the threshold value increases, the system performance of the #exible con"gurations decreases, getting closer to the performance of the non-#exible con"gurations (which does not vary), because the system is more constrained and cannot completely exploit its potential #exibility. It is also interesting to stress that the performance of the limited #exibility con"guration is considerably closer to the total #exibility one than to the no-#exibility one, despite the low number of links allowed between the resources (just those of the chain), showing the bene"ts of this simple con"guration. The di!erences in percentage of the lead time performance (the same happens for the WIP) between the di!erent con"gurations and for the di!erent threshold values are reported in Table 1. These values stress how the bene"ts of the #exibility increase with the operating level, due to a better distribution of the work-load. In particular, the results con"rm that the bene"ts are more evident in the comparison between the limited #exibility con-

Table 1 Comparison of the LT performance of the TF, LF and NF con"gurations, with ST"0 Operating level 0.60 TV"3 TF vs. LF LF vs. NF TV"10 TF vs. LF LF vs. NF 0.70 0.80 0.90

!5% !22%

!8% !41%

!12% !71%

!19% !130%

!1% !3%

!2% !4%

!4% !19%

!8% !62%

TV"3 vs. TV"10 TF !22% LF !18%

!43% !35%

!55% !44%

!56% !45%

"guration and the no-#exibility con"guration, and particularly for a low threshold of the dispatching rule (TV"3), thus pointing out the advantages of the limited #exibility con"guration. In addition, it can be observed that the adoption of the dispatching rule with a higher threshold (TV"10) provides a higher penalty for the total #exibility performance for any operating level, and that, for higher operating levels, these penalties,

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remarkable also for the limited #exibility con"guration tend to become stable in percentage.

4. The e4ect of the setup time Of course, the condition of ST"0 is not real in many cases, i.e. in all the situations where the setup times are not negligible compared to the processing times. In Fig. 3, the performance of the three system con"gurations is reported for the various operating levels, with ST"0.3 and the two threshold values of the dispatching rule, TV"3 and TV"10. The performance of the non-#exible con"guration, due to its completely dedicated resources, is not a!ected by the setup time. Let us consider "rst the low threshold of the dispatching rule, TV"3. As it can be observed

from the comparison with Fig. 2, the setup time makes the performance of the #exible con"gurations decrease (in Table 2 the lead time comparison is reported). In particular, Fig. 3 shows that the total #exibility remains the best con"guration only until the increasing operating level does not cause a critical system congestion (which, for the operating levels considered, happens for values higher than 80%), showing a negative reaction to demand variations and limiting the possibility of satisfying further demand. In fact, in correspondence of the 90% operating level the system is not in a steady state anymore. The limited #exibility, instead, shows a very good reaction to the operating level increase: the system performance is very close to that of the total #exibility up to the 70% of the operating level, while it is the best con"guration for higher operating levels (Table 3). Besides, for this con"guration the setup

Fig. 3. System performance with ST"0.3.

A.C. Garavelli / Int. J. Production Economics 69 (2001) 39}48 Table 2 Comparison of the LT performance of the TF and LF con"gurations Operating level ST"0 vs. ST"0.3 TV"3 TF LF TV"10 TF LF 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90

45

!6% !17% !842% !5% !14% !27%

!46%

0% 0%

0% 0%

!5% !5%

!42%

Table 3 Comparison of the LT performance of the TF, LF and NF con"gurations, with ST"0.3 Operating level 0.60 TV"3 TF vs. LF LF vs. NF TV"10 TF vs. LF LF vs. NF 0.70 0.80 0.90

!4% !14%

!5% !19%

#85% !26%

!36%

!0.4% !2% !1% !4%

!4% !12%

!13%

TV"3 vs. TV"10 TF !19% LF !14%

!22% !18%

#83% !21%

!32%

penalties have a smaller e!ect on system performance, as it can be inferred from Table 2. If we look at the system performance in correspondence of a higher threshold value (TV"10), from Fig. 3 it can be inferred that the totally #exible system still performs better with a lower threshold, because, as we have seen in the previous section, it exploits better its #exibility. But this is true only up to the 70% of the operating level (Table 3). For higher values of loading, in fact, the totally #exible system performs better with a higher threshold, because, by limiting the #exibility degree of the con"guration, it also reduces the number of setups and the consequent system congestion, unless the

operating level increases so much (more than 80%) that the totally #exible system becomes unsteady anyway (Table 3). This e!ect is not relevant for the limited #exibility con"guration, which with the higher threshold value provides the worst performance for any operating level, getting closer to the non-#exible con"guration. As with the lower threshold, it does not collapse even at the operating level of 90%, where its utilization becomes higher than that of the no#exibility con"guration, showing to be very robust in relation to setup time variability. The similarity of the con"guration performance with TV"10 is also shown by the average system utilization (Fig. 3). This performance, in fact, reveals that only with high operating levels (*80%) the #exible con"gurations use their potential #exibility, distributing the work load to the resources. For TV"3, instead, the utilization shows that the resources are used more than the dedicated resources of the no-#exibility con"guration for a very wide range of the demand. The performance of the #exible con"gurations decreases with setup times higher than ST"0.3. In these cases, not shown here for the sake of brevity, the totally #exible con"guration tends to collapse sooner, i.e. for lower operating levels, and also the limited #exibility can become unsteady, in particular if a dispatching rule with a low threshold value is adopted. In short, the #exible con"gurations provide a better performance than that of the no#exibility con"guration in a range of operating levels (or, equivalently, below a threshold operating level) which decreases as the setup time increases. The adoption of a higher threshold value could then seem the right choice in these cases, but the system performance gets very close to that of the non-#exible con"guration, so that this con"guration appears more appealing, due to the simplicity of its shop #oor control and to the correspondent cost savings.

5. The e4ect of the system dimension The simulation results reported in Fig. 4 are obtained in correspondence of an increase of the number of resources and the product families from

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Fig. 4. System performance with ST"0.3, N"10.

5 to 10 (N"10), with ST"0.3. These results con"rm most of the considerations made in the previous cases (Sections 3 and 4). In particular, the results con"rm that the limited #exibility provides a very close performance to that of the total #exibility for low operating levels, and then becomes the best con"guration for higher values of the demand. This con"guration always performs better with a low threshold of the dispatching rule than with a high TV, since it allows to better exploit the #exibility bene"ts, without considerably increasing the system congestion. On the contrary, in correspondence of high demand (operating level higher than 70%), the total #exibility con"guration needs a higher threshold of the dispatching rule (TV"10) to contrast the increasing number of setups. As in the previous Sections, the non-#exible con"guration provides a reference for the performance, which is usually worse than in the other #exible con"gurations, although it assures to the system the steady state even in conditions of very high demand. In particular, for the non-#exible con"guration the variation of the system size

does not involve any performance variation (except the WIP increase), due to the absence of links between dedicated resources which makes each resource behave as a single, independent system. Also for the other con"gurations there are no considerable variations. The most relevant result is provided by the total #exibility con"guration which, with a low threshold of the dispatching rule (TV"3), becomes unstable at the operating level of 80% for N"10 (Fig. 4), while it has just the worst performance for that level for N"5 (Fig. 3). This can be justi"ed by the increased congestion generated by the larger #exible system, which provides more opportunities for the product batches to "nd less loaded resources, thus increasing the setup penalties for the system. This consideration points out that as the system size increases, the #exibility degree of the system has to be limited in order to exploit the #exibility bene"ts for a wide range of operating levels. This can be done by adopting either a more `conservativea dispatching rule (TV"10), or the limited #exibility con"guration. In the "rst case, with TV"10, the similarity of the system behaviors in the two sizes is stressed. However, the performance of the #exible con"gurations in both systems is closer to that of the corresponding no-#exibility con"gurations, and the total #exibility becomes unstable anyway for high values of the operating level (more than 80%). In the second case, on the contrary, the limited #exibility con"gurations allow to exploit the bene"ts of #exibility with a low threshold of the dispatching rule (which assures better performance than the non-#exible con"guration) in both sizes, remaining stable even for high operating levels (more than 90%).

6. Conclusions A simulation study has been carried out to evaluate the behavior of a batch production system characterized by di!erent #exibility degrees. In particular, three #exibility con"gurations have been considered: total #exibility (as in a job-shop), no-#exibility (as in a cellular system with no intercell move) and limited #exibility (a particular inter-cell routing #exibility). The performance of

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lead time, work-in-process and resource utilization have been investigated for di!erent system operating levels, dispatching rules, setup times and system dimensions. The simulation results have shown that the limited #exibility con"guration usually provides excellent performance. In fact, this quite simple con"guration is very good either in contexts where more #exible systems are penalized, such as when there are high setup times, system complexity (many product families), and demand (high resource loading), or where the #exibility is particularly advantageous, such as when setup times are negligible, the system is usually under-loaded or the complexity is quite limited. In fact, in the former case the limited #exibility con"guration exploits the bene"ts of #exibility maintaining a low system congestion, unless the context (demand, setup times, complexity) becomes very critical. In the latter case, it is competitive with the total #exibility con"guration, because it partially shares the bene"ts of the work-load distribution among the system resources and is less onerous in terms of investments and costs. The total #exibility con"guration, able to distribute the work-load among a large number of resources, provides better performance than the other two system con"gurations if the setup times are not comparable to processing times. In this case, the system succeeds in maintaining a good performance as the operating level increases. However, with higher setup times the system #exibility yields a system congestion as the demand increases, so that the performance and the system capability of satisfying the demand requirements drastically decrease. Other devices, such as more sophisticated dispatching rules, for instance with thresholds variable with the demand requirements, should be adopted in this case to allow the totally #exible con"guration to perform adequately. However, the performance achievable by the system in this case might not justify the complexity of this kind of intervention. On the other hand, the no-#exibility con"guration often provides the worst performance, even if the system is capable of working in this case even with a high level of the demand. This con"guration could be preferred when the system operates in

conditions that would be tolerated by #exible systems only by adopting complex dispatching rules. In fact, in these situations the simplicity of the shop #oor control might drive the con"guration choice.

Acknowledgements This research has been funded by the University of Lecce, Department of Innovation Engineering. Particular thanks are addressed to Alfredo Bottalico, who contributed to the "rst development of the research. The author also wishes to thank Ilaria Giannoccaro for her suggestions.

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