An elaborate analysis of production systems in industry: what a consultant should know

Kostas S. Metaxiotis Electrical & Computer Engineer, National Technical University of Athens, Institute of Communications & Computer Systems, Athens, Greece Kostas Ergazakis Electrical & Computer Engineer, National Technical University of Athens, Institute of Communications & Computer Systems, Athens, Greece John E. Psarras National Technical University of Athens, Institute of Communications & Computer Systems, Athens, Greece

Keywords
Manufacturin g industry, Production systems, Schedulin g

Introduction

In recent years industrial markets have undergone important changes, which have It is common knowledge that transformed the way in which during the last decade markets manufacturers must act and perform so as to have become extremely maintain competitiveness; changes in competitiv e with product variety management, process technology, customer increasing continuousl y and product life cycles shortening. expectations, supplier attitudes, competitive Many manufacturing companies , behavior and many other aspects. As a which hitherto satisfie d their consequence of these changes, quality, customers while operating specifi c productio n systems, were reliability and speed with minimum costs have become essential requirements to recently obliged to reconside r because of the potential compete with success. superiorit y of other According to Spina et al. (1996) ``many ``manufacturin g philosophies . In industrial markets have turned into virtually the literature, we meet a great variety of productio n systems and world-wide battlefields in which customers manufacturin g philosophies , are demanding ever wider ranges of while, on the other side, in relatively low cost reliable and high quality industry we usually find different products and ever shorter and reliable combination s of ``primary delivery times. The word ``change is production s systems. In this nowadays a permanent feature of the general paper, we present the existing ``state-of-the-art theoretical and business environment and companies, which experientia l knowledge about are able to adapt to the new environment, are production s systems, as well as likely to gain significant competitive describe their basic advantage. Adapting to the new characteristic s in a useful, exact and comprehensiv e way for environments has meant, for many practitioner s and software houses companies, looking for new ways of who want to have a knowledge organizing and managing their production. base for further research and In literature, many authors have stressed practical implementatio n in the wider field of productio n the need for ``new wave manufacturing management, planning and strategies (e.g. Hayes and Pisano, 1994; scheduling. Leong et al., 1990) to ensure manufacturing flexibility. Others have considered the ability of manufacturing companies to adapt to their changing environment as a key to long-term success (Spina et al., 1996; Meredith et al., 1994; Hum and Sim, 1996; Price et al., 1994). Others have underlined the fact that higher Industrial Management &
Abstract Data Systems 101/4 [2001 ] 185193 # MCB University Press [ISSN 0263-5577] The current issu e an d full text archive of th is journal is available at http://www.emerald-library.com/ft

levels of computerization may result in stronger ability to produce wider ranges of products and greater flexibility in switching among different products (Richter, 1996). In any case, it is easily understood that the needs of a modern company are liable to dynamic changes. The globalisation of the economy, the increase of the manufacturing competition and the bursting evolution of the information technology force many manufacturing companies to proceed to reengineering and restructuring of their production systems and strategies. Starting from these considerations, this paper aims at exploring and presenting on an empirical basis the production systems that are met in industry. In particular, the paper analyses in depth the key features of the production systems and environments, creating in this way a comprehensive and solid knowledge base to be exploited by individual consultants, production experts, practitioners, software houses, and of course companies in the way of manufacturing restructuring and improvement. Talking about software houses, we should stress that many sophisticated and complex manufacturing information systems (ERP, scheduling systems, etc.) have unfortunately shown unsatisfactory performance due to developers superficial knowledge of the key features of the production systems, which has eventually led to unsuccessful modeling of the manufacturing environments. The importance of the complete knowledge of production systems and of their peculiarities behind the implementation of manufacturing software should not be underestimated (Karwowski and Salvendi, 1994). For example, US software houses have experienced an estimated 50 to 75 per cent failure rate in implementing advanced manufacturing technologies, mostly due to

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neglect of incomplete knowledge and experience of production systems (Saraph and Sebastian, 1992).

Industrial environments classification

Before proceeding to an in-depth description of the production systems met in industry, it would be advisable to study firstly how it is possible to classify an industrial environment, comprising all its characteristics. In the literature the most popular method is the four-field notation (A | B | C | D) of Conway et al. (1967). A is the number of jobs that must be processed by the machines, B is the number of machines, C is the flow pattern within the machine shop and D is the performance measure by which the schedule of production is evaluated. Although this descriptive technique is suitable for basic environments, when we are in front of non-basic environments (with characteristics more common in practice, such as preemption, dependent jobs etc.), then the three-field notation ( | | ) of Graham et al. (1979) is more appropriate (Pinedo, 1995). The field describes the machine environment and contains a single entry. The field may contain no entries, a single entry, or multiple entries. These entries provide details of processing characteristics and constraints. The field contains the objective to be minimized and usually contains a single entry (Brucker, 1997). Figure 1 presents the symbols of most common entries of field, accompanied with a brief explanation. We must note that: . The number of jobs to be processed and the number of machines are assumed to be finite. The number of jobs is denoted by n, while the number of machines is denoted by m. We refer to a job with the subscript j. . In the literature we may find different symbols for the same entries. In the field we specify the processing restrictions and constraints, which may include multiple entries (Lawler et al., 1993). Some possible entries are: . Release dates (rj). If this entry appears in field job j may not start its processing before its release date rj. Otherwise, the processing of job j may start at any time. . Sequence dependent setup times (sjk). Machines often have to be reconfigured or cleaned between jobs. We state this process by the term changeover or setup. If the length of the setup depends on the job just completed and on the one about to be started, then the setup times are sequence dependent.

Preemptions (prmp). Preemptions imply that is not necessary to keep a job on a machine until completion. It is allowed to interrupt the processing of a job, when a high priority rush order arrives at the machine. When the processing already done on the preempted job is not lost, then the preemption is referred as preemptive resume. If it is lost, then we have preemptive repeat. Precedence constraints (prec). In a machine environment, it is possible that the processing of a job can start only after the completion of a given set of others jobs. Such constraints are referred to as precedence constraints and can be described by a precedence constraints graph. Blocking (block). Blocking is a phenomenon that may occur in different types of production systems. Buffer in between two successive machines may be limited. If this buffer is full, the upstream machine is not allowed to release a completed job. Breakdowns (brkdwn). Machines breakdowns imply that machines are not continuously available. Permutation (prmu). In the flow shop environment, the queues in front of each machine may operate according to the FIFO discipline. This implies that the order in which the jobs go through the first machine is maintained throughout the system. Recirculation (recrc) . Recirculation may occur in production systems of type job shop, when a job may visit a machine more than once. No wait (nwt). Jobs are not allowed to wait between two successive machines. In this way, the starting time of a job at the first machine has to be delayed to be ensured that the job can go through the shop without having to wait for any machine. Reentrance . Jobs return to a workcenter several times before completion. This practice is met very often in the semiconductor industry (Graves et al., 1983; Kubiak et al., 1996). Machine eligibility constraints. In a parallel machine environment, job j may often not be processed on any of the available machines, but rather must be processed on a machine belonging to a specific subset Mj of the machines. This happens when the m machines in parallel are not identical. Tooling constraints. Machines frequently require one or more tools to process the jobs they handle. These tools may be of

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Figure 1 Possible entries for a field

various types, some with only limited availability. Storage-Space constraints. In many production systems, especially those that produce bulky items, the amount of space available for WIP storage is limited. This constraint puts an upper bound on the number of jobs waiting for a machine (Pinedo and Chao, 1999). Material-Handling constraints. Modern assembly systems (e.g. automobile assembly facility) often have materialhandling systems that convey the jobs from one workcenter to another. Such systems enforce strong dependencies between starting times of operations and the completion times of their predecessors.

where dj represents the committed shipping or completion date of job j. The tardiness of job j is defined as: Tj maxCj dj ; 0 maxLj ; 0

Description of production systems

Before analyzing the production systems widely met in industry, we need to identify the various types of production activities that may be encountered. It has been found convenient to identify three main types (Baker, 1974): 1 Continuous production , where the demand for a product requires production on a continuous basis. 2 Batch production, where the rate of demand for a product is well below the rate at which it can be produced, so that production is carried out intermittently to avoid excessive stockpiling. 3 Job production, where various jobs, each with its own array of processing requirements, need to be loaded in some sequence on a given set of production facilities.

Finally, the field usually contains a single entry that provides information about the objective to be minimized. In the following Table I, we present the most common entries. We must note that the time job j exits the system is denoted by Cj. The lateness of job j is defined as: Lj C j d j

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Table I Possible entries for field Entries Makespan (Cmax) Brief explanation The makespan is defined as the time the last job leaves the system. It is defined as max(C1,. . . , Cn). A minimum makespan usually implies a high utilization of the machines It is defined as max(L1,. . . , Ln). It is a measure of the worst violation of the due dates The sum of the weighted completion times of n jobs gives us an indication of the total holding or inventory costs

Maximum lateness (Lmax) Total weighted completion time ( wjCj)

Discounted total weighted completion time This is a more general cost function than the previous one, where ( wj(1 erCj)) costs are discounted at a rate of r, 0 < r < 1, per unit time Total weighted tardiness ( wjTj) Work-in-process inventory costs Setup costs This is also a more general cost function than the total weighted completion time WIP ties up capital, and large amount of WIP can clog up operations. WIP increases handling and inventory costs It often pays to minimize the setup times when the throughput rate has to be maximized
shop model: in some flow shops, if a job does not need processing at a particular machine, it may bypass that machine and go ahead of the jobs being processed or waiting for processing there. These systems are known as non-permutation flow shops. Other flow shops allow that bypass. Then, we say that they operate under the first in first out (FIFO) discipline and the system is referred to as a permutation flow shop. A generalization of the flow shop is the flexible flow shop (or compound/hybrid flow shop), which consists of a number of stages in series with a number of machines in parallel at each stage. Jobs are processed at each stage on any one of the parallel machines, as presented in Figure 2. The queues between the various stages usually operate under the FIFO discipline. Applications of this system can be found to cosmetics, textile and food industries. Many production systems may belong to the batch/flow shop category. Here, the production process is divided in two parts. The first part is a batch shop, where the processing of raw materials takes place. The second part is a flexible flow shop system. A

In modern industries, there are many different combinations of machine configurations and consequently of productions systems. The most important and mainly met in industry are:

Flow shop
In many manufacturing or assembly environments, jobs have to undergo multiple operations on a number of different machines. All jobs have the same routing, so they have to be processed first on machine 1, then on machine 2, and so on. The machines are set up in a series, and whenever a job completes its processing on one machine, it joins the queue at the next. The sequence of the jobs may vary from machine to machine, since jobs may be resequenced between machines. However, the same job sequence is maintained throughout the system if a material handling system transports the jobs from one machine to the next. In the general flow shop scheduling problem we are given a set of m machines {M1,. . . , Mm} and a set of n jobs {J1,. . . , Jn} . Each of the n jobs has to be processed on the m machines M1,. . . , Mm in that order. A job Jj, j = 1,. . . , n consists of a sequence of m operations O1j,. . . , Omj, where Oij must be processed on machine Mi for a given uninterrupted processing time pij. Each machine Mi, i = 1,. . . , m can process at most one job at a time, and each job Jj , j = 1,. . . , n, can be processed by at most at one machine at a time. Let Cij be the completion time of operation Oij. The objective is to produce a schedule that minimizes an objective function. The problem above, may be different if we consider some basic variations of the flow

Figure 2 Flexible flow shop

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food company, for example, at a first stage, processes the products in large boilers, connected with pipes. This system is not usually totally linear. The second half comprises bottling, canning and packing of products in parallel lines. Finally, we have a model known as reentrant flow shop. We mainly meet this type of system in semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities (Demirkol and Uzsoy, 2000). The shop consists of m machines organized as a flow shop. Jobs move through the shop as through a flow shop, but may skip certain machines. Once the job has completed a pass through the shop, it may reenter the shop for another set of operations, not necessarily in the same machines it visited the previous time. Jobs incur sequence dependent setup times at each machine. Usually, the objective in this type of systems is to minimize the maximum lateness over all jobs. A number of authors have studied scheduling reentrant flow shops. Graves et al., 1983 solved the problem of minimization of the average throughput time subject to meeting a given production rate. Kubiak et al. examined (1996) the scheduling of reentrant shops to minimize total completion time.

instance, the release times of the jobs) the problem is called stochastic. The simplest job shop models assume that a job may be processed on a particular machine at most once on its route through the system. This system is known as classic job shop. Figure 3 represents the structure of a classic job shop. A generalization of the classic job shop is the flexible job shop with workcenters that have multiple machines in parallel. When a job on its route arrives at the workcenter it may be processed on anyone of the available machines. This environment is very common in semiconductor industry. The simplest job shop problems assume that a job may be processed on a particular machine at most once on its route through the system. In others, a job may visit a given machine several times on its route through the shop. These shops are said to be subject to recirculation, which increases in a significant degree the complexity of the model. The most complex machine environment, from a combinatorial point of view, is the flexible job shop with recirculation.

Flexible assembly systems

Here we have a limited number of different product types and a given quantity of each product type must be produced by the system. It is obvious, that two units of the same product type are identical. A material handling system is responsible for the movement of jobs in a flexible assembly system. It imposes constraints on the starting times of the jobs on the various machines. The completion time of a job on a machine determines its starting time on the next machine on its route. On the other side, the material handling system limits the number of jobs in the buffers between the machines. There exist three types of flexible assembly systems: In unpaced assembly systems, we have a flow line with a number of machines in series. Any job can spend a much time is needed on any machine. Blocking may be caused on account of limited buffers between successive machines. The goal is the production of different product types in given

Job shop
In multioperation shops, jobs often have different routes. This environment is referred to as a job shop, which is a generalization of a flow shop. (A flow shop is a job shop in which each and every job has the same route). In the job shop problem, we are given n jobs i = 1,. . . , n and m machines M1,. . . , Mm. Job i consists of a sequence of n i operations Oi1 ; Oi2 ; . . . ; Oin ; which must be processed in this order, i.e. we have precedence constraints of the form Oij ! Oi,j+1 (j = 1,. . . , ni 1). There is a machine ij {M1,. . . , Mm} and a processing time pij associated with each operation Oij. Oij must be processed for pij time units on machine ij. The problem is to find a feasible schedule, which minimizes some objective function depending on the finishing times Ci of the last operations of the Oi,ni jobs. If not stated differently we assume that ij 6 i,j+1 for i = 1,. . . ,ni 1. In case all jobs to be scheduled are available at the beginning of the scheduling process the problem is called static, if the set of jobs to be processed is continuously changing over time the problem is called dynamic. In a deterministic problem all parameters are known with certainty. If at least one parameter is probabilistic (for

Figure 3 Classic job shop

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quantities and the maximization of throughput. We meet this environment, for example, in an assembly of copiers where copiers with different characteristics are assembled on the same line. In paced assembly systems, the units that have to be assembled are moved from one workstation to the next by a conveyor system, at a fixed speed. As before, each workstation has its own capacity and constraints. The goal is to prevent workstations from being overloaded and to minimize setup costs. These systems are very common in the automotive industry, where we have to assemble cars of different types on one line. Finally, there is a system in which there are a number of machines in parallel at each workcenter. This system is known as flexible flow system with buffers and bypass. The process of a job may take place on any of the parallel machines, while a workcenter may be bypassed. Manufactures of printed circuit boards use this type of system. The goal is the maximization of throughput too.

equipped with the appropriate tool. The multipurpose machine problem is described as follows (Brucker, 1997): we have n jobs J1,. . . , Jn and each job Ji consists of a set of operations Oi1,. . . , Oini. In addition, we have m multipurpose machines Oi1,. . . , Oini equipped with different tools. An operation Oij (i = 1,. . . , n; j = 1,. . . , ni) must be processed by a specific tool for pij time units and consequently by a specific machine equipped with this tool. In this way, there is a set Mij {M1,. . . , Mm} which is related with each operation Oij. We have the following restrictions: . A machine cannot process more than one operation at the same time. . An operation cannot be processed by more than one machine at the same time. In Figure 4, we can see an example of a scheduling problem with multiprocessor machines, with two jobs, three operations and three machines. Operations O11, O12 and O21 must be processed by the tool }, & and 5 respectively. Operation O11 can be processed by machine M1 or M2, O12 by M2 or M3 and O21 by M3 too.

Open shop
In this system, each job has to be processed on each of the m machines. However, some of these processing times may be zero. The route of each job through the machine environment may be different.

Lot sizing
In some systems (e.g. in flexible assembly systems) we may have a schedule that alternates frequently between different job types because of the fact that setup times and costs are not important (Pinedo and Chao, 1999). In these cases, it is preferable to have an alternating schedule because it is usually more efficient that one with long runs of identical jobs. In other systems, setup times and setup costs may be significant. If the processing of a job in a machine requires a major setup, then it may be beneficial to let this job be followed by similar jobs. This uninterrupted processing of a series of identical items is called a run. The run lengths are referred as lot sizes. The form of production known as continuous manufacturing has the main characteristic that we have processing of identical items in long runs. This situation, inevitably involves inventory holding costs. The scheduling

Batch shop
In a production system of this type, the production of identical finished or unfinished products is massive and it is preferable to have a batch processing in order to achieve large economies of scale. Flow of jobs in these systems is not totally linear, but it is less complicated than in open shops. An example of a batch shop system is a garment industry.

Multiprocessor task systems

In these systems, tasks require processing by one or more machines at a time. We have m different machines, M1,. . . , Mm and n tasks i = 1,. . . , n. Each task i requires a specific processing time pi by all the machines belonging to a given subset Mi {M1,. . . , Mm}. Some tasks that require the same machine cannot be processed at the same time. In this case, these tasks are called incompatible. Otherwise they are called compatible.

Figure 4 Scheduling problem with multiprocessor machines

Multipurpose machines shop

In this case, we have a number of multipurpose machines, capable of processing different jobs. These machines may be equipped with different tools. A machine can process a job only if it is

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problem consists in the determination of lot sizes, and their sequencing in a way that minimizes the setup costs and the setup times. This problem is known as economic lot scheduling problem (ELSP) and, in practice, it has many applications in case that inventory holding costs are substantial such as in the pharmaceutical, paper, chemical, aluminum and steel industries.

Just-in-time
In recent years, many manufacturing companies have been challenged to increase their focus on customer satisfaction and quality of products. Confronting the challenges of global competition, companies world-wide are forced to find ways to reduce costs, improve quality and meet the ever-changing needs of their customers. One successful solution has been the adoption of just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing systems, which involve many functional areas of a company such as manufacturing, engineering, marketing, and purchasing. JIT was developed in Japan in the 1950s and it achieved considerable success in Toyota. The basis for JIT was the production system of Toyota after the Second World War. Until the early 1980s the thrust of much of the analysis of Japanese production systems had focused on cultural differences and concluded that there was a particular Japanese ``mindset that facilitated their success. Schonberger championed the notion (1982) that these systems were based on a set of procedures and techniques that could be implemented independent of any particular cultural conditions. He provided the following definition of the just-in-time manufacturing system:
The JIT idea is simple: produce and deliver finished goods just-in-time to be sold, sub assemblies just-in-time to be assembled into finished goods, fabricated parts just-in-time to go into sub-assemblies, and purchased materials just-in-time to be transformed into fabricated parts. (Schonberger, 1982)

It is easily understood that the philosophy of JIT can bring impressive advances in productivity and quality in manufacturing industries. Being a strategic weapon for process improvement, JIT has been subjected to numerous studies in the literature. The conclusion is that JIT perspectives are excellent although there are areas of greatest potential for improving performance such as technology, training of workers, quality and so on. In addition, we should mention also the Group Technology (GT) philosophy of cellular manufacturing systems. Group Technology has emerged as a significant philosophy in improving the productivity of production systems (Onwubolu, 1998). This philosophy offers a systems approach to the reorganization of the traditional complex job shop and flow shop production systems into cellular or flexible manufacturing systems. The main objective of this philosophy is to achieve the following benefits for production systems (Ang, 2000): . simplification of flow of parts and tools; . reduction of set-up times; . reduction of average material handling time; . lowering work-in-process; and . reduction of throughput time. In this category of modern manufacturing improvement philosophies, we could include also total quality management (TQM), business process re-engineering (BPR) and time-based competition (TBC), which use the principles of the cellular manufacturing systems. Finally, we must note that in literature some other production systems such as single machine shop or parallel machine shop are studied (Moore, 1968; Morton and Pentico, 1997; Brucker, 1997; Blazewicz et al., 1991). In practice, in industry we can find some combinations of these ``primary production systems. However, their theoretical study is important in order to acquire a better insight on real systems.

The ultimate goal of JIT is to eliminate all forms of waste. This goal is approached by testing each step in a process to determine if it adds value to the product. If the step does not add value, then, it is examined closely to determine possible alternatives. In this way, each process gradually improves. In general, companies try to realize the following benefits (Chase et al., 1998): . lower raw material, work in process, and finished goods inventories; . higher levels of product quality; . increased flexibility and ability to meet customer demands; . lower overall manufacturing costs; and . increased employee involvement.

Conclusions
This paper recognizes the problem of the lack of a comprehensive ``knowledge base for production systems in industry, although the academic contribution to this area is abundant. The paper presents an elaborate analysis of the production systems which are met in industry, giving the opportunity to practitioners, managers, consultants and software houses to acquire very easily specific knowledge that they could ignore. This knowledge has been proved to be

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crucial in many research and practical activities in the wider field of production management. The analysis described in this paper creates a strong theoretical and empirical basis on which further research and practical applications can rely. Production scheduling problems are one of the main fields on which future research can and/or should be focused, due to the big number of its peculiarities, restrictions or constraints. On the other hand, ERP systems have already become the new fashion. Although many projects in the past have failed because of loss of focus, lack of expertise, lack of funding and minimum business participation, ERP vendors try to expand their systems with new capabilities (e.g. scheduling). We should keep always in mind that all the well-known commercial packages dealing with the enterprise resources planning, such as SAP, BAAN, Oracle, PeopleSoft do not support production scheduling. In any case, implementing ERP is only part of the solution to creating a seamless operational environment. The complete solution involves making a business commitment, implementing truly global systems (Gupta, 2000).

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Further reading
Artiba, A. and S.E. Elmaghraby, (1997), The Planning and Scheduling of Production Systems, Chapman & Hall, London. Bedworth, D. and Bailey, J. (1987), Integrated Production Control Systems Management, Analysis, Design, Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. Buffa, E.S. (1976), Operations Management: The Management of Production Systems, Wiley, New York, NY. Kussiak, A. (1990), Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Lozinsky, S. and Wahl, P., (1998), Enterprise-Wide Software Solutions: Integration Strategies and Practices, Addison-Wesley Publication, Readubgm NA. Martinich, J. (1997), Production and Operations Management, J. Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. Shtub, A. (1999), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): The Dynamics of Operations Management, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.

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