IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v40y1994i11p1469-1483.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Design for Synchronized Flow Manufacturing

Author

Listed:
  • Reza H. Ahmadi

    (Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90024-1481)

  • Herman Wurgaft

    (Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90024-1481)

Abstract

Firms that build flexibility into their manufacturing system gain a competitive edge from their ability to efficiently produce a mid-variety of products at mid-volumes. In order to realize the competitive edge of flexible systems, manufacturing management has to deal effectively with the greater complexity that flexibility brings about. One of the key factors for the success of a flexible system is the management of the product set flow. If the product flow is poorly managed, products may have long manufacturing lead times, and materials may spend a large amount of time in queues as work in process. In such a situation, most of the competitive potential of the flexible system may be lost. But if the flow of materials through the production/assembly stations is carefully synchronized, with materials moving smoothly and continuously from one operation to the next, then it is possible to attain short manufacturing lead times and little waiting. We refer to this operating condition as synchronized flow. In this paper, we study how to attain a synchronized flow for product sets with different characteristics regarding process flexibility and consistency.

Suggested Citation

  • Reza H. Ahmadi & Herman Wurgaft, 1994. "Design for Synchronized Flow Manufacturing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(11), pages 1469-1483, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:40:y:1994:i:11:p:1469-1483
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.40.11.1469
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.40.11.1469
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.40.11.1469?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Boysen, Nils & Fliedner, Malte & Scholl, Armin, 2008. "Assembly line balancing: Which model to use when," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 509-528, February.
    2. van Zante-de Fokkert, Jannet I. & de Kok, Ton G., 1997. "The mixed and multi model line balancing problem: a comparison," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 399-412, August.
    3. Vairaktarakis, George L. & Cai, Xiaoqiang & Lee, Chung-Yee, 2002. "Workforce planning in synchronous production systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(3), pages 551-572, February.
    4. Roemer, Thomas A. & Ahmadi, Reza, 2010. "Models for concurrent product and process design," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 203(3), pages 601-613, June.
    5. Jian Chen & Meilin Wang & Xiang T. R. Kong & George Q. Huang & Qinyun Dai & Guoqiang Shi, 2019. "Manufacturing synchronization in a hybrid flowshop with dynamic order arrivals," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 30(7), pages 2659-2668, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:40:y:1994:i:11:p:1469-1483. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.