0000000000050284
AUTHOR
Paolo Renna
Reconfiguration: a key to handle exceptions and performance deteriorations in manufacturing operations
During a manufacturing operation, exceptions may occur dynamically and unpredictably. Their occurrence may lead to the degradation of system performance or, in the worst case scenario may interrupt the production process by causing errors in the schedule plan. This paper classifies three families of exceptions: (1) out-of-order events such as machine breakdowns, (2) operational out-of-ordinary events such as rush orders and (3) deteriorations of manufacturing resource performance such as reductions of machines' utilization. In all cases, in order to maintain an adequate level of system performance, it is necessary to detect exceptions, to diagnose them quickly and to recover them by taking …
Production planning in reconfigurable enterprises and reconfigurable production systems
Reconfigurable enterprises and reconfigurable production systems represent nowadays one of the key responses towards the organisational and manufacturing needs arising in the new era known as mass customization. The paper proposes an Agent Based approach for the production planning activities in reconfigurable enterprises, characterized by complex, articulated and geographically distributed production capacities contended by many product families and composed by reconfigurable production systems that allow quick adjustment of production capacity and functionality consenting to manufacture different products of the same part family.
A DSS for Strategic Planning
This chapter presents an innovative approach for assisting entrepreneurs in making long term capacity decisions in Advanced Manufacturing Systems (AMSs). AMSs require high investment costs in manufacturing equipment, human resources and technology knowledge. Such high investments together with the wideness and the variability of the competition scenario contribute to increase the perception of the risk for industrial entrepreneurs especially in SMEs. This problem could be approached by providing the entrepreneur with a Decision Support System (DSS) able to assist her/him in making long term capacity decision in AMS. The DSS proposed in this chapter allows the entrepreneur to plan its produc…
High Level Planning of Reconfigurable Enterprises: a Game Theoretic Approach
Reconfigurable Enterprises (REs) represent production networks made of different and geographically dispersed plants that, in case of unpredictable market changes, can be reconfigured in order to gather a specific production objective. However, REs effectiveness and efficiency depend on the extent to which global performance is obtained. Basically two approaches are available to reach coordination: centralised or decentralised planning tools. In this paper, the authors propose a novel cooperative game theoretical approach for distributed production planning at high level of a RE; the proposed approach has been benchmarked in front of both a distributed one, based on negotiation, and a centr…
Pricing Policies of Excess Capacity in Make to Order Production Systems
The research concerns a make to order manufacturing environment and two classes of customers who submit orders. The core customers have a contract with the firm at fixed services level (price and due date). The short-term customers submit the orders based on the price set by the firm. In this paper, it is proposed a pricing policy based on fuzzy logic to set the price for the short-term customers. The fuzzy approach captures the state of the manufacturing systems in terms of congestion in order to set the price. The policy proposed is compared to a fixed price, and to a state-dependent policy based on three levels of price. A discrete event simulation environment is used to test the propose…
Order allocation in a multiple suppliers-manufacturers environment within a dynamic cluster
This study faces the problem of how to evaluate order allocation strategies in a multiple suppliers-manufacturers environment within a dynamic industry cluster that is an environment in which suppliers adopt a policy based on their performance to select the clusters in which to operate. Therefore, the allocation strategy performed by the manufacturers is crucial to keep a long-term supply chain partnership with a specific industry cluster. We use simulation to evaluate order allocation strategies under different market conditions. We show how an allocation strategy that takes into account the whole supply chain’s perspective leads to a sustainable development of the clusters of suppliers.
Coordination policies to support decision making in distributed production planning
Abstract Distributed production networks are considered organizational structures able to match agility and efficiency necessary to compete in the global market. Performances of such organization structures heavily depend on the ability of the network actors of coordinating their activities. The research proposes to model and design coordination problems within production network by using the Multiple Agent Technology. In particular, the paper proposes new strategies for coordinating production-planning activities within production networks. Such models have been developed and tested by using a proper simulation environment developed by using open source code and architecture. The results o…
The Holonic Production System: a Multi Agent Simulation Approach
Today’s turbulent markets are facing unpredictable and sudden variations in demand. In this context, the Holonic Production System (HPS) seems to be able to overcome the operational and economic problems of traditional production systems. The HPS’ ability to adapt and react to business environment changes, whilst maintaining systemic synergies and coordination, leverage on its network organizational structure, assuring both flexibility and profitability. In this paper we study HPS experimentally, modeling holon-firms as agents. In our simulation, holon-firms interact both with each other and with the external environment without predetermined hierarchies and following their own aims and int…