The use of labour flexibility for output control in workload controlled flow shops: A simulation analysis
- 1 January 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Growing Science in International Journal of Industrial Engineering Computations
- Vol. 11 (3), 429-442
- https://doi.org/10.5267/j.ijiec.2019.11.004
Abstract
Workload control theory seeks to align capacity and demand to improve delivery performance. However, workload control researchers mainly focused on input control, which regulates the input of work to the production system, thereby neglecting output control, which uses capacity adjustments to regulate the outflow of the work. Moreover, few existing studies on output control investigate a temporarily increase in capacity. This paper introduces a new search direction for output control which does not require an increase in capacity - labour flexibility. Idle operators can move from their workstation to another, thus temporarily increasing the output of that workstation without extra capacity. Using simulation of a five workstations flow shop line, we highlight the positive performance effect of labour flexibility. However, this comes at the cost of high labour movement. Introducing a load-based constraint on when workers are allowed to move significantly reduces labour movement, while realizing most of the performance improvement observed for unconstrained labour movement. This has important implications for future research and practice. (C) 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, CanadaKeywords
This publication has 39 references indexed in Scilit:
- A taxonomy of line balancing problems and their solutionapproachesInternational Journal of Production Economics, 2013
- A simulated annealing algorithm for multi-manned assembly line balancing problemJournal of Manufacturing Systems, 2013
- Implementing labor flexibility: A missing link between acquired labor flexibility and plant performanceJournal of Operations Management, 2012
- Optimising workload norms: the influence of shop floor characteristics on setting workload norms for the workload control conceptInternational Journal of Production Research, 2010
- Concerning the theory of workload controlEuropean Journal of Operational Research, 2010
- Optimal allocation of heterogeneous workers in a U-shaped production lineComputers & Industrial Engineering, 2008
- A classification of assembly line balancing problemsEuropean Journal of Operational Research, 2007
- A review of production planning and control: the applicability of key concepts to the make-to-order industryInternational Journal of Production Research, 2005
- Comparing variance reduction to managing system variance in a job shopComputers & Industrial Engineering, 2004
- The relative contributions of input and output controls on the performance of a workload control system in Make-To-Order companiesProduction Planning & Control, 2002