Generic Routings for ConWip Sizing in a Multi-product Environment
Résumé
In a vulnerable, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, ConWip provides a sustainable, effective and adaptive production control system for manufacturers. The present paper deals with the key questions related to the implementation of ConWip in a high product mix and/or high routing mix environment. To respond to this challenge, generic routing has to be defined to cover all of the routings of the high product mix. Through four algorithms, this paper studies how to define a representative routing. A numerical sample is derived from industrial data. We implement it in the four algorithms to generate four different generic routings. Then, thanks to Wipsim, an engineering tool used in projects to design and improve ConWip lines, we calculate the optimized ConWip parameters for each of them. Finally, we compare the results and highlight some research avenues.