Article ID: | iaor20051695 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 42 |
Issue: | 22 |
Start Page Number: | 4641 |
End Page Number: | 4672 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2004 |
Journal: | International Journal of Production Research |
Authors: | Egbelu P.J., Ko K.-C. |
Keywords: | job shop |
Driven by intense global competition, governments, industry and academia in recent years have invested a considerable amount of resources to make production systems more efficient. However, in most cases, once a production system type is adopted for a shop, the operation mode of the shop remains the same over time. In today's environment where changes in product mix, production batch sizes and technology are common, what is required is a procedure that allows a shop to adapt or reconfigure its mode of operation based on the production instance at hand to achieve maximum efficiency. In the present paper, the application of a virtual production system is proposed to provide such flexibility and adaptability in production. A virtual production system has the capability of switching from one operation mode to another without actual physical reconfiguration of the shop and does this to maximize its operational efficiency. Such a virtual production system is examined. Experimental results for a set of example problems show that virtual production systems are superior to traditional production systems.