TY - JOUR
T1 - A space allocation algorithm for assembly line components
AU - Bukchin, Yossi
AU - Meller, Russell D.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Ms. Amy M. Brown, an M.S. student in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech, for her work to code the algorithm and to perform the computational study. This study was supported in part by the awarding of NSF CAREER grants DMII 9623605 and 9996444 to Russell D. Meller.
Funding Information:
Russell D. Meller is an Associate Professor at Virginia Tech in the Grado Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering. He joined Virginia Tech after 7 years on the faculty at Auburn University. He received his B.S.E., M.S.E., and Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering from The University of Michigan. His dissertation on facility layout was awarded the 1994 Institute of Industrial Engineers Outstanding Dissertation Award and First Prize in the 1993 College on Location Analysis Dissertation Prize Competition from The Institute of Management Sciences. In 1996 he received a CAREER Development Grant from the National Science Foundation and in 2002 won IIE’s Outstanding Young Industrial Engineer Award. His professional experience includes consulting with the SysteCon Division of Coopers & Lybrand, General Electric, Cross Creek Apparel, and the Russell Corporation. His research interests include facilities layout and location, automated material handling systems, and operations research applications in forestry. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, General Motors, Ingersoll-Rand, and other companies. He has published his research in IIE Transactions, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Operations Research, Management Science, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, International Journal of Production Research, and other journals. In addition, he is a department editor for IIE Transactions and on the Editorial Board of Journal of Manufacturing Systems. He is a member of IIE, serving as a faculty advisor for over 10 years. He is also a member of INFORMS and Alpha Pi Mu, as well as being President of the College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education.
PY - 2005/1
Y1 - 2005/1
N2 - A component stockout during the assembly process is one of the most undesirable events that can occur since the resulting line stoppage is associated with extremely high costs. In this paper we address the problem of allocating space to components along the line, subject to practical constraints. The objective is to maximize the line fill-rate; namely, the probability of no line stoppages due to a lack of components between consecutive replenishments. A model for calculating the line fill-rate is presented. This model is then incorporated into a design algorithm that determines the space allocation. A large experiment for moderate-sized and large-scale problems is performed to evaluate the algorithm performance. Our experiment indicates this performance to be excellent, producing optimal solutions on moderate-sized problems in most cases and solutions that are better than three intuitive rules for most of the large-scale problems considered.
AB - A component stockout during the assembly process is one of the most undesirable events that can occur since the resulting line stoppage is associated with extremely high costs. In this paper we address the problem of allocating space to components along the line, subject to practical constraints. The objective is to maximize the line fill-rate; namely, the probability of no line stoppages due to a lack of components between consecutive replenishments. A model for calculating the line fill-rate is presented. This model is then incorporated into a design algorithm that determines the space allocation. A large experiment for moderate-sized and large-scale problems is performed to evaluate the algorithm performance. Our experiment indicates this performance to be excellent, producing optimal solutions on moderate-sized problems in most cases and solutions that are better than three intuitive rules for most of the large-scale problems considered.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=11844274635&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/07408170590516854
DO - 10.1080/07408170590516854
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AN - SCOPUS:11844274635
SN - 0740-817X
VL - 37
SP - 51
EP - 61
JO - IIE Transactions (Institute of Industrial Engineers)
JF - IIE Transactions (Institute of Industrial Engineers)
IS - 1
ER -