Simulation Study On Production Operation And Control Of Flow Manufacturing System

Nowadays, competition in market is becoming fiercer, and the individuality and diversity of consumers'demand is increasing. In this environment, production update speed is acceler-ated, production variety is extended and the cycle time is reduced. These new features chal-lenge the traditional production model and make a shift from the high volume, repetitive mass production to high-mix and low volume mass customized production. The traditional flow manufacturing technology faced to high volume and repetitive mass production is hard to ex-tend to high-mix and low volume production. In order to realize the improvement of the sys-tem performance in new environment, this thesis mainly studies the new operation and control mode of flow manufacturing and its realization in simulation system.The operation and control framework built in this thesis aggregates the theories and technologies including TOC, JIT, flow manufacturing and virtual manufacturing cell. The op-eration and control mechanism in this new framework is introduced comprehensively. Its main characteristics are as following: with the utilization of group technology, the product objects are changed from parts to part families, consequently, the equipment utilization is in-creased and the capacity waste because of frequently setup is reduced, integrated with tech-nologies of the design of virtual manufacturing cells and flow paths, the layout method com-bined with the dynamic flow paths and static flow paths provides the basis for the manufac-turing with material balance and fast response. Apply the pull-push production control method based on the bottleneck's takt on flow path to reach systemic optimization, other than individual optimization oriented organization method.In traditional simulation models, parts are just flowed according to the connecting direc-tion of machines, and the process times of parts on the same machine are fixed. To overcome these disadvantages, a new part-driven process simulation method which is suitable for simu-lation in the high mix and low volume production environment is present. With the utilization of SimTalk language in eM-Plant, the planning algorithm based on bottleneck is carried out. Inserting the calculate process of the bottleneck planning in the simulation software reduces the optimization process and time, and meanwhile decreases the cost for application of simu-lation technology.Faced to the problem on how to design and realize the flow manufacturing mode, this thesis studies and summarizes the related key technologies such as the division of flow paths, determination of bottleneck and so on. With the utilization of simulation software– eM-Plant, the simulation model based on the new operation and control mode was built. And the com- parison result shows its superiority to traditional operation and control mode. Finally, based on the summary of this thesis, the future research on how to improve this mode and how to systematization and software is present.