Evaluation of pull control strategies and production authorisation card policies recovery period in a multi-product system

Abstract

Pull production control strategies have demonstrated poor responses to large variations in demand volume. A recently developed pull production control strategy referred to as Base Stock-Kanban-CONWIP control strategy is capable of minimising WIP while maintaining high volume flexibility. This paper investigates the recovery period of pull production control strategies and production authorisation card policies after lumpy demands in a multi-product manufacturing system. Discrete event simulation and multi-objective optimisation approach were adopted to develop sets of non-dominated optimal solutions for configuring suitable decision set to the pull control strategies. It was shown that the shared Kanban allocation policy outperforms the dedicated Kanban allocation policy. Additionally the Basestock-Kanban CONWIP control strategy outperforms the alternatives.