Design for process flexibility: Efficiency of the long chain and sparse structure
Chou, M.C. Chua, G.A. Teo, C.-P. Zheng, H.
Chua, G.A.
Zheng, H.
Citations
Altmetric:
Alternative Title
Abstract
The concept of chaining, or in more general terms, sparse process structure, has been extremely influential in the process flexibility area, with many large automakers already making this the cornerstone of their business strategies to remain competitive in the industry. The effectiveness of the process strategy, using chains or other sparse structures, has been validated in numerous empirical studies. However, to the best of our knowledge, there have been relatively few concrete analytical results on the performance of such strategies vis-á-vis the full flexibility system, especially when the system size is large or when the demand and supply are asymmetrical. This paper is an attempt to bridge this gap. © 2010 INFORMS.
Keywords
Design, Facility planning, Flexible manufacturing, Production, Random walk, Stochastic programming
Source Title
Operations Research
Publisher
Series/Report No.
Collections
Rights
Date
2010
DOI
10.1287/opre.1080.0664
Type
Article