Modeling Product Variety Induced Manufacturing Complexity

DATE: March 24, 2009

TIME: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

LOCATION: IC 217

FEES: none

EVENT CONTACT:

Jennifer Harris, ISyE
Contact Jennifer Harris
404-894-2300

TITLE: Modeling Product Variety Induced Manufacturing Complexity for Mixed Model Assembly Systems

SPEAKER: Dr. S. Jack Hu

ABSTRACT:

Mass customization has been the mantra for today's manufacturing. As a result of the paradigm change from mass production to mass customization, the number of product variety offered by manufacturers has increased drastically. Such an increase presents enormous difficulties in the design and operation of the manufacturing systems. It has been shown by both empirical data and simulations that increased variety can impact manufacturing performance, such as quality and productivity. So it is necessary to investigate how product variety complicates the design and operations of a manufacturing system. In this talk, I will present the recent research progresses in modeling product variety induced manufacturing complexity in mixed model assembly systems. An information entropy based measure is proposed to quantify the complexity in manufacturing. Then models are developed to analyze the propagation of complexity in multi-stage assembly systems. Finally, we apply such models to assembly system design.