Buffer management. A diagnostic tool for production control

Buffer management (BM) serves as the control extension to the drum-buffer-rope shop floor planning and scheduling technique. Two necessities are a time buffer and its implications and the definition of the information needed for controlling the shop floor. The shop-floor production control method described here assesses the actual state on the floor compared to the planned state and points out those areas that urgently need corrective action. Simple comparison between planned and actual state is not practical; in most cases, the data collection itself is so enormous that it cannot be done frequently. In other cases the task of the user, who has to draw conclusions out of a huge list of deviations from the plan, becomes very difficult.