Cross-Functional Integration of New Product Prototyping and Mass Production using Job Shop Scheduling and Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis

Ren Xitong

Abstract

In the manufacturing industry, new product prototyping may be delayed when the mass production jobs and prototyping jobs are done by the same group of manufacturing machines and the technicians are not incentivized to work on new product prototyping. This project will develop a model of job shop with recirculation based on the current job shop model. The delay of new product prototyping problem by will be simulate by a model integrating flow shop and job shop with recirculation. Two possible solutions are proposed: increase the bonus for completing prototyping jobs or setting up a separate team specialize in prototype production. These solutions will be simulated by the model of job shop with recirculation. The value of the proposed solution is evaluated by the different of the makespan of the two models. These models are Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) models in Python and solved by Gurobi solver. It has been shown that, these solutions are able to significantly reduce the makespan compared with the current situation. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is adopted to evaluate the multiple decision criteria of the two proposed solutions. Setting up a new department for prototyping is more preferred.