An Analysis of Characteristics of Flow Shop Type Production System : A Study on Production Scheduling for Flow Shop (Part I)

Abstract

This paper discusses the results of an analysis of characteristics of the flow shop that manufactures products by orders, from the point of view of production sheduling. The flow shop has the features as follows : (i) the demand rate flucturates with time, and (ii) the manufacturing time interval permitted is short. Charactristics of the flow shop are affected by these features and a production sheduling method. So that, experimentation results of using a simulation method are showed and the load fluctuation on the machines are analyzed as follows : (i)a main component of load fluctuation is common to all machines depending on the demand rate fluctuatuin, and(ii) a load deviation on each machine from the main component is relatively small depending on job processing time.