Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, International Journal of Production Research, 55 (22), 2014, © Informa Plc
Accepted author manuscript, 423 KB, PDF document
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Continuous workload control order release revisited
T2 - an assessment by simulation
AU - Thurer, Matthias
AU - Qu, Ting
AU - Stevenson, Mark
AU - Maschek, Thomas
AU - Filho, Moacir
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, International Journal of Production Research, 55 (22), 2014, © Informa Plc
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Order release is a key component of the Workload Control concept. Jobs do not enter the shop floor directly – they are retained in a pre-shop pool and released in time to meet due dates while keeping work-in-process within limits or norms. There are two important groups of release methods: continuous methods, for which the workload falling to a specified level can trigger a release at any moment in time; and, periodic release methods, for which releases take place at fixed intervals. Continuous release methods in general have been shown to outperform periodic release methods. Yet, there is incongruence in the results presented in the literature on the relative performance of the various continuous release methods. We use a job shop simulation model to examine the performance of continuous release methods from the literature and find that the contradictory results are explained by the different rules applied to sequence jobs in the pool – a factor neglected in previous work. Finally, a new breed of continuous release methods has recently emerged, but these have not been compared with prior approaches. Therefore, we also examine these methods and show that they significantly improve overall performance, although this is to the detriment of jobs with large processing times.
AB - Order release is a key component of the Workload Control concept. Jobs do not enter the shop floor directly – they are retained in a pre-shop pool and released in time to meet due dates while keeping work-in-process within limits or norms. There are two important groups of release methods: continuous methods, for which the workload falling to a specified level can trigger a release at any moment in time; and, periodic release methods, for which releases take place at fixed intervals. Continuous release methods in general have been shown to outperform periodic release methods. Yet, there is incongruence in the results presented in the literature on the relative performance of the various continuous release methods. We use a job shop simulation model to examine the performance of continuous release methods from the literature and find that the contradictory results are explained by the different rules applied to sequence jobs in the pool – a factor neglected in previous work. Finally, a new breed of continuous release methods has recently emerged, but these have not been compared with prior approaches. Therefore, we also examine these methods and show that they significantly improve overall performance, although this is to the detriment of jobs with large processing times.
KW - continuous order release
KW - workload control
KW - job shop
KW - simulation
U2 - 10.1080/00207543.2014.907514
DO - 10.1080/00207543.2014.907514
M3 - Journal article
VL - 55
SP - 6664
EP - 6680
JO - International Journal of Production Research
JF - International Journal of Production Research
SN - 0020-7543
IS - 22
ER -