Fast algorithm for evaluating the similarity of manufacturing processes within a dynamic production environment

To achieve efficient and economical production, planners and/or designers of production systems frequently must evaluate manufacturing process similarities for various products that they intend to produce. Such work is particularly important in product-mix production, which is widely used in various production systems, including product-oriented repetitive manufacturing, cellular manufacturing, and process-oriented manufacturing. A new potential application for evaluating manufacturing process similarity is necessary in dealing with capacity exchange between rush orders and prescheduled orders. Traditionally, most evaluating methods assumed an essentially static environment, and merely compared the manufacturing routing, processing time and demand. Meanwhile, other more complex evaluating methods were simply impractical. This study suggests a relatively simple but practical method for evaluating the manufacturing process similarity within a dynamic bucketed production environment. The proposed algorithm considers load projection and workstation utilization in terms of a current production schedule. Finally, a real numerical instance is cited to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.