| The purpose of this research is to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of different production monitoring and control strategies in a generalized remanufacturing job shop environment. This is an important area of industrial engineering and management science research that has received relatively little attention. Remanufacturing is an industrial process in which worn-out products are restored to like-new condition. Many complex systems such as Space Shuttles, military aircraft, ships, commercial aircraft, and railroad locomotives are remanufactured. Assets from these systems are sent to logistics depots where remanufacturing operations are performed. Managing the remanufacturing task is more difficult than building a product from raw materials and components. All remanufacturers encounter mutiple problems which make monitoring and controlling functions much more difficult than in traditional manufacturing.; This research effort defines and characterizes a remanufacturing job shop, which involves the development of a generalized remanufacturing job shop model. A comparison of four production monitoring and control strategies in a remanufacturing job shop was made using simulation experiments with remanufacturing turn-around time (RTAT) as the figure of merit. The strategies compared were materials requirements planning (MRP), just-in-time (JIT), Hybrid Push/Pull, and the drum-buffer-rope (DBR) method of synchronized manufacturing. A more robust and applicable remanufacturing complexity measurement was developed.; The JIT (pull), Hybrid Push/Pull, and DBR (synchronized manufacturing) strategies performed equally well with respect to RTAT at the 90% confidence level for both low and high levels of remanufacturing complexity. These three strategies were significantly better than the MRP (push) strategy with respect to RTAT under either remanufacturing complexity setting at the 90% confidence level. The implication is that the MRP monitoring and control process significantly adds to remanufacturing cycle time. This is because of the large amount of time spent collecting and conceding production status data when utilizing a MRP system, as well as the need for frequent replanning in order to maintain a reasonably accurate production schedule. |
