Developing and Deploying Electronics Assembly Line Optimization Tools: A Motorola Case Study
Journal Title: Decision Making in Manufacturing and Services - Year 2008, Vol 2, Issue 1
Abstract
The assignment of workloads to production equipment is one category of planning decision for an electronics assembly factory. In practice, line balancing requires not only selecting machines with sufficient placement accuracy and feeder capacity, but also address- ing a host of other operational objectives and constraints. Motorola Labs led a multi-year effort to apply mathematical programming to balance a variety of production mix and vol- ume scenarios. By representing the optimization problem as a specially structured, mixed linear-integer program, we were able to incorporate a high degree of reality in the model, simultaneously optimizing fixed setups, handling custom parts, maximizing machine uptime, and mitigating secondary bottlenecks. This paper presents the story of how we developed and deployed a software solution that significantly improved assembly cycle times, setup changeovers, and overall factory productivity, saving the company tens of millions of dollars.
Authors and Affiliations
Thomas M. Tirpak
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP422417
- DOI 10.7494/dmms.2008.2.2.63
- Views 91
- Downloads 0
Three-Machine Flowshop Scheduling Problem to Minimize Total Completion Time with Bounded Setup and Processing Times
The three-machine flowshop scheduling problem to minimize total completion time is studied where setup times are treated as separate from processing times. Setup and processing times of all jobs on all machines are unkno...
A Reference Point Method to Triple-Objective Assignment of Supporting Services in a Healthcare Institution
This paper presents an application of mixed integer programming model for op- timal allocation of workers among supporting services in a hospital. The services include logistics, inventory management, financial managemen...
A Two-Phase Algorithm for a Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem with Discounted Cash Flows
This paper presents a Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) settled by contractual milestones. The criterion analysed here is the maximisation of aggregate discounted cash flows from the contractor’s pe...
Insertion Algorithms with Justification for Solving the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling
The paper presents the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with the makespan minimisation criterion. To solve the problem, the authors propose insertion algorithms which generate schedules with use of forward...
Guest editorial
We are glad to see the final version of this special issue of Decision Making in Manufacturing and Services (DMMS) on Optimization in Supply Chain Management take shape. It does not come as a surprise that we received a...