Buffer Size Setting Method for DBR Scheduling

Abstract

There are many kinds of delay in real-world production systems caused by many reasons including unexpected accidents. A delay of order may inflict great damages for not only itself but also the other affected orders. To prevent these types of loss from frequent delay, DBR (Drum-Buffer-Rope) scheduling method of TOC (Theory of Constraints) manages production schedule observing the state of time buffers. The current buffer size setting method for DBR scheduling is very simple and depends on user's experience. Although it makes possible to keep the due time for production orders, it leads to the redundant production lead time and stock. For DBR scheduling, it is not clear how the buffer size should be set. Therefore, this paper proposes a buffer size setting method for DBR scheduling providing a numerical model for the buffer size. In addition, a simulation gives the result of comparison between the current method and the proposed method, and the effect of the proposed method is shown.