Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Production Research on 02/03/2016, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00207543.2016.1156182
Accepted author manuscript, 581 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 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
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Workload control in job shops with re-entrant flows
T2 - an assessment by simulation
AU - Thurer, Matthias
AU - Stevenson, Mark
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Production Research on 02/03/2016, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00207543.2016.1156182
PY - 2016/7
Y1 - 2016/7
N2 - One of the key functions of Workload Control is order release. Jobs are not released immediately onto the shop floor – they are withheld and selectively released to create a mix of jobs that keeps work-in-process within limits and meet due dates. A recent implementation of Workload Control’s release method highlighted an important issue thus far overlooked by research: How to accommodate re-entrant flows, whereby a station is visited multiple times by the same job? We present the first study to compare the performance of Workload Control both with and without re-entrant flows. Simulation results from a job shop model highlight two important aspects: (i) re-entrant flows increase variability in the work arriving at a station, leading to a direct detrimental effect on performance; (ii) re-entrant flows affect the release decision-making process since the load contribution of all visits by a job to a station has to fit within the norm. Both aspects have implications for practice and our interpretation of previous research since: (i) parameters given for work arriving may significantly differ from those realised; (ii) increased workload contributions at release mean that prior simulations may have been unstable, leading to some jobs never being released.
AB - One of the key functions of Workload Control is order release. Jobs are not released immediately onto the shop floor – they are withheld and selectively released to create a mix of jobs that keeps work-in-process within limits and meet due dates. A recent implementation of Workload Control’s release method highlighted an important issue thus far overlooked by research: How to accommodate re-entrant flows, whereby a station is visited multiple times by the same job? We present the first study to compare the performance of Workload Control both with and without re-entrant flows. Simulation results from a job shop model highlight two important aspects: (i) re-entrant flows increase variability in the work arriving at a station, leading to a direct detrimental effect on performance; (ii) re-entrant flows affect the release decision-making process since the load contribution of all visits by a job to a station has to fit within the norm. Both aspects have implications for practice and our interpretation of previous research since: (i) parameters given for work arriving may significantly differ from those realised; (ii) increased workload contributions at release mean that prior simulations may have been unstable, leading to some jobs never being released.
KW - order release
KW - workload control
KW - job shop
KW - simulation
KW - re-entrant flows
U2 - 10.1080/00207543.2016.1156182
DO - 10.1080/00207543.2016.1156182
M3 - Journal article
VL - 54
SP - 5136
EP - 5150
JO - International Journal of Production Research
JF - International Journal of Production Research
SN - 0020-7543
IS - 17
ER -