Article ID: | iaor201113143 |
Volume: | 20 |
Issue: | 6 |
Start Page Number: | 937 |
End Page Number: | 948 |
Publication Date: | Nov 2011 |
Journal: | Production and Operations Management |
Authors: | Gunn Eldon A, MacDonald Corinne |
Keywords: | production: JIT, management, manufacturing industries, control, control processes, simulation, simulation: applications, neural networks, optimization, combinatorial optimization |
A framework for the analysis of manufacturing systems operating under a production authorization card (PAC) system is outlined. The PAC system provides a single model, which encompasses a broad variety of control strategies, including Kanban and CONWIP. This paper describes a framework for the performance analysis and comparison of both specific and families of control strategies. The framework starts with system performance measures estimated by simulation. These simulations in turn provide training data for neural network metamodels. The metamodels allow for a variety of analysis and optimization approaches, including the construction of optimal policy curves, which can provide considerable insight into the systems under study.