Machining and material flow system design for minimum cost production

In many manufacturing organizations, batch production is an everyday occurrence. Usually, the batch size may range from less than ten parts to thousands. The majority of batch manufacturing in the US is in batches of 100 parts or less. Unless adequate control is exercised, potential sources of operational improvements on batch manufacturing systems can be easily overlooked. Two main time consuming activities encountered in batch manufacturing are operations at the workstation level and material handling. Parts can be handled individually or in small lots. In this paper, a methodology for selecting the machining parameters at each workstation and the material flow plan in a multi-stage production system is presented. The model objective is to minimize total production cost. A forward dynamic programming algorithm imbedded within a unidimensional search algorithm is used in seeking a solution to the model. The procedure can be easily computerized for use as a regular shop planning system.