Construction of integrated manufacturing optimization system in material industry

The system developed is a scheduling system for a material manufacturer. The company focused attention on improving productivity by operating production facilities more efficiently. To this end, the company mainly aimed at increasing the lot size of production plans and decreasing equipment change losses. Production plans were done manually with a huge amount of time and were controllable only on a macro basis to prevent the occurrence of opportunity losses from operational stoppage due to the absence of inventory. Actual work instructions were issued by control departments and were loosely linked with production plans. The work instructions were formed to maximize the lot size for increasing production efficiency, and lacked in long-term outlook and total cost control. The globalization of competition called for strengthening nonprice competitiveness by shortening the manufacturing lead time as well as reducing costs. To this end, it was necessary to do away with production control aimed at improvement in the productivity of specific process units and to accomplish production plans in a short time at a low inventory level without spoiling productivity. Our scheduling model covers not only the problem of allocating lots to a process but a higher level of production planning. The objective of production planning is to incorporate the philosophy of the kanban method for manufacturing what is required in as large a quantity as required when needed. What we should especially emphasize is the simplification of the model by the hierarchization of scheduling tasks and the distribution of roles between the man and machine. The scheduling system presented is run on a daily basis and is highly rated by the users.