PRODUCTION FLOW MANAGEMENT: MULTI-OBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION AND SCHEDULING THROUGH THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS

In recent years small medium enterprises (SME) have to manage an increasing number of products, while trying to improve effectiveness of the system to achieve the imposed objectives. The high complexity of the production system and the difficulty to manage the system lead to a low effectiveness regarding the objectives, high inventory and low throughput rate. This paper considers an approach to solve these problems, based on the concept of theory of constraints (TOC). Every organization has at least one constraint. A constraint is any cause that limits the organization’s goals. When focusing on the constraints, TOC gives a substantial improvement without the need for excessive resources. The main goal of this paper is the redesign and control of a production flow that achieves specific performances. This is a typical problem SMEs have. To overcome the constraints, a discrete event simulation (DES) software simulates the production and optimises through optimization software. It includes the analysis, simulation and then subsequently the creation of a new production layout and a potential weekly optimization. For maximizing the desiderated performances a rescheduling of the weekly production period is done using the drum-buffer-rope (DBR) method.