| Abstract: | It is essential to manage customers’ diverse desires and to keep manufacturing costs as low as possible for survival in competition
and eventually in production. Sharing resources in manufacturing for different products is a vital method of accomplishing
this goal. The advantages of using a common process in production are stated in the literature. However, the mathematical
models as well as simulation or conceptual models are not sufficient. The main objective of this paper is to develop mathematical
models for multiproduct and multistage production under quality and breakdown uncertainties. The idea of the process commonality
is incorporated in the proposed models. The models are validated by primary data collected from a Malaysian company and comparison
of the timely requirement schedules of earlier MRP II and the proposed models under stable and perfect production environments.
An appreciable convergence of the outcomes is observed. However, the proposed models are carrying additional information about
the available locations of the parts in a time frame. After validation, the effects of process commonality on cost, capacity
and the requirement schedule under uncertainties are examined. It is observed that the use of common processes in manufacturing
is always better than the non-commonality scenario in terms of production cost. However, the increase in capacity requirement
for commonality designs is higher for an ideal system, while it is less when the system suffers from breakdowns and a quality
problem. |
