Study on dispatching with quality assurance

Dispatching rule for parallel machines with multi product is proposed in this paper. In current market, customer's request for higher quality is increasing. In accordance with such demand, manufacturers are focusing on improving the quality of the products. Such shift in production objective is risky. The possibility of neglecting another important factor in customer satisfaction increases, namely due dates. From the aspect of improving quality, frequency of product assignment to limited number of high performance machines will increase. This will lead to increased waiting time which can incur delays. In the case of due date oriented product dispatch, products are assigned to machines without consideration for quality. Overall deterioration of product quality is inevitable. In addition, poor products will undergo rework process which can increase delays. The objective of this research is dispatching products to minimize due date delays while improving overall quality. Quality index is introduced to provide means of standardizing product quality. The index is used to assure predetermined quality level while minimizing product delays when dispatching products. Quality standardization method and dispatching algorithm is presented. And performance evaluation is performed with comparison to various dispatching methods.