Impact of Machine Reliability on Key Lean Performance Measures: The Case of a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS)

Wa-Muzemba Anselm Tshibangu

2016

Abstract

Uncertainty in production systems may arise from different sources including machines, parts, tools or material handling failures. For this reason the need for the production system to be flexible enough to respond to unanticipated breakdowns or failures become highly recognized. This paper considers a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) and analyzes the effect of a combination of various design and operational parameters on the overall system performance under different machine failures/breakdowns patterns. Three performance criteria including throughput rate (TR), mean flow time (MFT), work-in-process (WIP), are analyzed for various machine and AGV scheduling rule combinations over a range of AGV fleet size. These key Lean indicators are selected because they are tenants of Little’s Law considered as the backbone equation in Lean Six Sigma methodologies as it advocates the reduction of waste, variability and work in process around the process in order to reduce the cycle time while increasing quality. Comparison is made with the performance profile of a system operating in a failure-free mode. The results reveal that machine and material handling scheduling rule combinations together with the maintenance policy in use may affect significantly the performance of a production system. The results also show that there is an acceptable level of machine breakdown (reliability) for which the system performance is similar to a failure free system.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Tshibangu W. (2016). Impact of Machine Reliability on Key Lean Performance Measures: The Case of a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) . In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO, ISBN 978-989-758-198-4, pages 567-575. DOI: 10.5220/0005986705670575

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icinco16,
author={Wa-Muzemba Anselm Tshibangu},
title={Impact of Machine Reliability on Key Lean Performance Measures: The Case of a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS)},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO,},
year={2016},
pages={567-575},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005986705670575},
isbn={978-989-758-198-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO,
TI - Impact of Machine Reliability on Key Lean Performance Measures: The Case of a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS)
SN - 978-989-758-198-4
AU - Tshibangu W.
PY - 2016
SP - 567
EP - 575
DO - 10.5220/0005986705670575