TY - JOUR

T1 - On the integration of card-allocation and dispatching decisions in POLCA systems

T2 - An assessment by simulation

AU - Fernandes, Nuno

AU - Thurer, Matthias

AU - Stevenson, Mark

N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Production Planning & Control on 27/10/2021, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09537287.2021.1995635

PY - 2023/9/30

Y1 - 2023/9/30

N2 - POLCA is an important card-based control system for low volume, high variety production contexts. A job can only be produced at an upstream station if it has acquired a POLCA card that has returned from its downstream station. A common assumption in the POLCA literature is that cards are allocated to jobs as soon as they return to the upstream station. This dissects the queue in front of a station into jobs that have a card (and can be produced) and those that do not have a card (and cannot be produced). This artificially and prematurely constrains the dispatching decision, i.e. the decision concerning which job to produce next at a station. In response, this paper proposes integrating the card-allocation and dispatching decisions such that the allocation of POLCA cards to jobs is postponed until the dispatching decision is made. Simulation results demonstrate that this integrated approach does not improve performance under simple ERD dispatching, as is commonly applied in the POLCA literature. But when a more powerful rule is applied, percentage tardy and mean tardiness performance improve by more than 75% and 50%, respectively, for an integrated decision. Most importantly, results suggest that in production environments like the one considered in this study, the integrated approach dispenses with the use of POLCA altogether if a suitable priority rule is used.

AB - POLCA is an important card-based control system for low volume, high variety production contexts. A job can only be produced at an upstream station if it has acquired a POLCA card that has returned from its downstream station. A common assumption in the POLCA literature is that cards are allocated to jobs as soon as they return to the upstream station. This dissects the queue in front of a station into jobs that have a card (and can be produced) and those that do not have a card (and cannot be produced). This artificially and prematurely constrains the dispatching decision, i.e. the decision concerning which job to produce next at a station. In response, this paper proposes integrating the card-allocation and dispatching decisions such that the allocation of POLCA cards to jobs is postponed until the dispatching decision is made. Simulation results demonstrate that this integrated approach does not improve performance under simple ERD dispatching, as is commonly applied in the POLCA literature. But when a more powerful rule is applied, percentage tardy and mean tardiness performance improve by more than 75% and 50%, respectively, for an integrated decision. Most importantly, results suggest that in production environments like the one considered in this study, the integrated approach dispenses with the use of POLCA altogether if a suitable priority rule is used.

KW - POLCA

KW - card-allocation decision

KW - dispatching decision

KW - discrete event simulation

U2 - 10.1080/09537287.2021.1995635

DO - 10.1080/09537287.2021.1995635

M3 - Journal article

VL - 34

SP - 1225

EP - 1232

JO - Production Planning and Control

JF - Production Planning and Control

SN - 0953-7287

IS - 13

ER -