Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH
Volume 47, Issue 16, Pages 4437-4456Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/00207540801939022
Keywords
buffer management; simulation; heuristics
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The placement of buffers in a production line is an old and well-studied problem in industrial engineering/operations research that is still relevant today. Decisions regarding the amount and placement of buffers in a production line occur repeatedly in system design. In this paper we document a new buffer placement method for serial production lines that operate under a variety of assumptions. The method uses information generated in a production line simulation, whose conceptual representation of job flow and workstation interaction can be described with a network, to place buffers in order to maximise throughput. This buffer placement method is very efficient and can be implemented in a spreadsheet. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method by comparing our results against those produced by a genetic algorithm for buffer placement. Experiments are conducted on a variety of test cases. This new buffer placement optimisation method will permit designers to quickly and effectively evaluate many design alternatives and thus improve final production system performance.
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