A Scheduling Method for Painting Line under Pull Production

Abstract

This paper concerns with a scheduling method for painting (preceding) line with much longer production lead-time than assembly (subsequent) line. In general, production schedule of the painting line is made independently based on the forecasted job requirement at the assembly line. When the job requirement changes at the assembly line by virtue of the change of customer order, therefore, production balance is destroyed between the both lines. To avoid the tardiness caused by such unbalance, we need to have many inventories for the painting line. Such countermeasure is taken place in many companies actually. Thus, to avoid the tardiness while keeping small inventory, we propose a scheduling method that makes a Pseudo-Pull production possible for the painting line. We have evaluated the proposed method through computer simulations.