Investigation on the Performance of Order Release Methods in a Flow Shop with Bottlenecks

The workload control (WLC) is a popular concept in manufacturing planning and control, which plays a significant role in enhancing the efficiency of manufacturing firms that have uncertainty in meeting customer orders. Owing to changes in several set of factors, such as processing time variations, fluctuation in orders, and rise in quality issues etc., would disrupt production schedules and adversely affect the shop performance. Improvements are certainly possible by integrating WLC policies in distinct stages of production that in turn help to keep a steady workflow and balanced shop floor activities. In this study, we have considered the production of a part of a windmill that poses difficulties in production due to changes in processing times. A production shop simulation model was developed by considering real-time data. The model is simulated to analyze the performance under different order release methods at process time changes. In addition, we consider the influence of downtime and capacity cushion at bottleneck station. The objective of this research is to investigate the influence of the processing time variation, downtime, and capacity cushion on the performance of the shop floor and to evaluate the best release method suitable in different situations.