Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in International Journal of Production Economics. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in International Journal of Production Economics, 188, 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2017.03.025
Accepted author manuscript, 978 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Drum-buffer-rope and workload control in high-variety flow and job shops with bottlenecks
T2 - an assessment by simulation
AU - Thurer, Matthias
AU - Stevenson, Mark
AU - Silva, Cristovao
AU - Qu, Ting
N1 - This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in International Journal of Production Economics. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in International Journal of Production Economics, 188, 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2017.03.025
PY - 2017/6
Y1 - 2017/6
N2 - Two key concepts in the production planning and control literature that incorporate an orderrelease function are the Theory of Constraints, with its drum-buffer-rope release method, andWorkload Control, with its load-based release methods. When order release is applied, jobs arenot directly released to the shop floor – release is controlled to realize certain performancemeasures. The performance impacts of drum-buffer-rope and Workload Control order releasehave been assessed separately, but the two approaches have not been directly compared in onestudy. This is a major shortcoming that leaves practitioners without guidance on which releasemethod to select. This study assesses the performance of drum-buffer-rope and WorkloadControl release in a pure job shop and a general flow shop with varying levels of bottleneckseverity. Both bottleneck oriented and non-bottleneck oriented Workload Control releasemethods are included. Simulation results show that Workload Control release methods lead tobetter performance than drum-buffer-rope if bottleneck severity is low. But Workload Control,including its bottleneck oriented release methods, is outperformed by drum-buffer-rope if astrong (or severe) bottleneck exists. Workload Control gains an advantage in balanced shops dueto its unique load balancing function, which attempts to evenly distribute workloads acrossresources. But this becomes functionless when there is a strong bottleneck. Our sensitivityanalysis suggests that the performance differences between release methods are not affected byrouting characteristics or the proportion of jobs that visit the bottleneck.
AB - Two key concepts in the production planning and control literature that incorporate an orderrelease function are the Theory of Constraints, with its drum-buffer-rope release method, andWorkload Control, with its load-based release methods. When order release is applied, jobs arenot directly released to the shop floor – release is controlled to realize certain performancemeasures. The performance impacts of drum-buffer-rope and Workload Control order releasehave been assessed separately, but the two approaches have not been directly compared in onestudy. This is a major shortcoming that leaves practitioners without guidance on which releasemethod to select. This study assesses the performance of drum-buffer-rope and WorkloadControl release in a pure job shop and a general flow shop with varying levels of bottleneckseverity. Both bottleneck oriented and non-bottleneck oriented Workload Control releasemethods are included. Simulation results show that Workload Control release methods lead tobetter performance than drum-buffer-rope if bottleneck severity is low. But Workload Control,including its bottleneck oriented release methods, is outperformed by drum-buffer-rope if astrong (or severe) bottleneck exists. Workload Control gains an advantage in balanced shops dueto its unique load balancing function, which attempts to evenly distribute workloads acrossresources. But this becomes functionless when there is a strong bottleneck. Our sensitivityanalysis suggests that the performance differences between release methods are not affected byrouting characteristics or the proportion of jobs that visit the bottleneck.
KW - Drum-Buffer-Rope
KW - Workload Control
KW - Order Release
KW - Bottleneck
KW - Theory of Constraints
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijpe.2017.03.025
DO - 10.1016/j.ijpe.2017.03.025
M3 - Journal article
VL - 188
SP - 116
EP - 127
JO - International Journal of Production Economics
JF - International Journal of Production Economics
SN - 0925-5273
ER -