Hamid R. Parsaei

A novel approach for measuring agility in manufacturing firms

Manufacturing firms have great interest in developing their manufacturing systems to be more competitive in terms of flexibility and agility. Agile Manufacturing Systems (AMS) will be considered as the next industrial revolution. They are manufacturing and/or management philosophies that integrate the available technology, people, manufacturing strategies, and management systems. Although agility is the set of capabilities and competences that the manufacturing firms need to thrive and prosper in a continuously changing and unpredictable business environment, measuring the level of agility in these firms is still unexplored according to the capabilities and competences. As there are many important components (issues) to be included in embracing AMS, there are also many important questions to be asked concerning the existing firms agility level and how to assist in achieving enhancing agility more effectively. In this paper, a novel model will be proposed to measure the agility level of the manufacturing firms based on existing technologies, level of qualifying people, manufacturing strategies, and management systems and the business process. A complete case study will be presented.

A prototype of a feature-based multiple-alternative process planning system with scheduling verification

The primary objective of this research was to develop a prototype feature-based multiple-alternative process planning system in which the process plan would be generated directly from design and available factory facility information. An overall removable volume is generated by graphically comparing the 3D part and 3D workpiece blank. The manufacturing features are decomposed into a series of general manufacturing features by using a mixed graph-based and rule-based algorithm. The multiple-alternative process plan generation is based on recognized manufacturing features and various production rules. After generating multiple process plans, each process plan is allocated the possible manufacturing scheduling time and the candidate process plans are retrieved based on the required due day. An example problem is presented to illustrate the functionality of the prototype system. This research presents an alternative method that provides useful information to the factory planner and controller to facilitate production.

Introducing new parts into existing cellular manufacturing systems based on a novel similarity coefficient

Over the last three decades, designing cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) still centres on assigning machines to machine cells and parts to part families. This task ends after assigning these part families to the appropriate machine cells. In the past, testing CMS was evaluated according to the efficiency of clustering, but actual testing of CMS after installation is still unexplored. Introducing one or more new parts (products) into CMS without any changes in the installation of the cells during processing of the current parts is a new concept to be considered and evaluated. Transferring these systems from traditional ideologues to advanced ideologues (agile systems) is highly desired. This concept can be considered as part (product) flexibility in CMS. To address this concept, a new similarity coefficient between the new part and the existing manufacturing cell will be created. New productivity and flexibility measurements in CMS will also be suggested. A new strategy for accepting a new part into CMS will be proposed based on machine utilization and flexibility in the cells, cell utilization and flexibility in the system, product flexibility (system flexibility), and similarity of this part with existing manufacturing cells. A complete analytical example will be presented.

Dimensions and measures of manufacturing performance measurement

The subject of performance measurement (PM) is generating increasing interest in both the academic and managerial ambits. Although the subject of manufacturing performance measurement (MPM) has recently become a very crucial issue, little has been done to identify the critical performance dimensions (competitive priorities), to enumerate the measures that exist, and how to select the appropriate measures. The primary objective of this paper is to identify the critical dimensions of performance and to identify a set of measures that reflects the performance it is trying to achieve as a first step to design an effective PM system. The second objective is to propose a framework to select the appropriate measures.

Economic Analysis of Rapid Prototyping Systems

Considering the large sums of money required to implement advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT), management must carry out appropriate evaluations and then make critical decisions. Traditional justification methods are insufficient by themselves because they cannot cope with benefits, such as flexibility and enhanced quality, offered by AMT. Selection and justification processes for AMT involve complex problems and require extensive analysis of a large number of criteria. An appropriate decision-making procedure for justification of AMT requires consideration of both economic and non-economic investments. An analytical model is presented for the selection of a rapid prototyping (RP) system from a set of mutually exclusive decision alternatives. The proposed model is based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) along with the Expert Choice software and it provides the means for integrating economic with non-economic benefits. A numerical example illustrates an application of the proposed model.

EFFECT OF ACTIVITY SCHEDULINGS AND INVENTORY CONTROL: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION FOR PC ASSEMBLY

ABSTRACT This paper investigates three scheduling algorithms and three inventory control policies to evaluate their effect on the system performance measures using computer simulation. The model chosen is a flow-shop type, computer assembly plant. Analysis is conducted on two scheduling measures (summation of process time and tardiness) and two inventory control measures (ordering cost and holding cost). The scheduling algorithms used are Shortest Processing Time, Genetic Algorithm and Simulated Annealing. The aim of the applied algorithms was to minimize the sum of flow times. Since it is known that SPT minimizes sum of flow times, it provides a benchmark for comparing the efficiency of genetic algorithm and simulated annealing search methods. EOQ, MRP and JIT are used as inventory control methods. An experimental design for the comparison is presented to evaluate which combination of control methods produces the best results under the designed scenario.

Integrated performance measurement systems: A review and analysis

The field of performance measurement (PM) has become so topical, so recently. Therefore, numerous integrated performance measurement systems (IPMS) have been proposed within the significant literature in the field of PM. These systems are designed to help organizations to identify a set of performance measures that appropriately reflect their objectives. So, the main objective of this paper is to review some of the measurement systems and identify the criteria that they reveal. The second objective is to analysis these systems.

A Framework for Part Placement in a Rapid Prototyping Process

Product development involves the collection of the customer needs, design of the required product, production and testing of prototypes, and production of the commercial product. These product development steps may be repeated several times in order to produce a final product. With such a repetitive product development procedure and long development time, it is difficult for a product manufacturer to fulfill a customer’s requirements in terms of time and cost. Meanwhile, without efficient modeling technology, the manufacturer is also limited in product variety and batch sizes that can be produced.