The examination of worker cross-training in a dual resource constrained job shop

Recently, the importance of worker cross-training has been recognized as a tool for increasing the flexibility of production systems, but little experimental work has been reported to date. This study examines the effects of various degrees of worker cross-training, which is represented by the labor efficiency matrix on the labor and machine limited shop’s performance. Five labor efficiency matrices are simulated, ranging from no cross-training through a completely flexible workforce. A SLAM simulation program that models five work centers with staffing levels of 50% provided the mechanism by which the performances of these five labor efficiency matrices were measured. Five dispatching rules, which included the modified operation due date rule, were employed to determine the sequence of jobs to be processed at each work center. The results analyzed by analysis of variance and Tukey’s multiple comparison test indicated that (1) the relative performance of dispatching rules remains the same as the degree of worker cross-training changes, and (2) the minimum introduction of worker cross-training has the most significant improvement from no cross-training and the subsequent increase of the cross-training has a diminishing return.