Optimal production sequence for a product with matching components

In the manufacture of mechanical heart valves, very high precision manufacturing and quality control is an absolute necessity. Since a mechanical heart valve consists of a number of components, it is imperative that the components match precisely. Motivated by this need in heart valve manufacturing, the authors study a new production control model for a product comprised of matching components. The model is also applicable to other production systems for manufacturing high precision products requiring careful matching of components. For a two-component case, the authors prove that a ‘greedy’ production sequencing rule is optimal. Based on this result, they then develop an effective greedy heuristic sequencing rule for more general cases. An extensive empirical study is used to evaluate the performance of this and one other heuristic rule.