Production Systems 发表评论(0) 编辑词条

 Businesses and organizations frequently face challenging operational problems whose successful

solution requires certain expertise in applied statistics, optimization, stochastic modeling, or a combination
of these areas. To illustrate, a company may need to design a sampling plan in order to meet specific
quality control objectives. In a manufacturing environment, operations that compete for the same resources
must be scheduled in a way that deadlines are not violated. The manager of a supermarket must determine
how many checkout lines to keep open at various times during the day and evening so that shoppers are not
unnecessarily delayed. Or as a final example, the size of the areas reserved for storing work in process at a
number of bottleneck stations has to be determined so that a smooth flow of work results, even at the
busiest (peak) production times.
The area of operations research that concentrates on real-world operational problems is called
production systems. Production systems problems may arise in settings that include, but are not limited to,
manufacturing, telecommunications, health-care delivery, facility location and layout, and staffing. The
area of production systems presents special challenges for operations researchers. Production problems are
operations research problems, hence solving them requires a solid foundation in operations research
fundamentals. Additionally, the solution of production systems problems frequently draws on expertise in
more than one of the primary areas of operations research, implying that the successful production
researcher can not be one-dimensional. Furthermore, production systems problems can not be solved
without an in-depth understanding of the real problem, since invoking assumptions that simplify the
mathematical structure of the problem may lead to an elegant solution for the wrong problem. Common
sense and practical insight are common attributes of successful production planners. At the current time, the
filed of OR is extremely dynamic and ever evolving. To name a few of the contemporary (primary)
research projects, current work in OR seeks to develop software for material flow analysis and design of
flexible manufacturing facilities using pattern recognition and graph theory algorithms. Further, approaches
for the design of re-configurable manufacturing systems and progressive automation of discrete
manufacturing systems are under development. Additional OR projects focus on the industrial deployment
of computer-based methods for assembly line balancing, business process reengineering, capacity planning,
pull scheduling, and setup reduction, primarily through the integration of the philosophies of the Theory of
Constraints and Lean Manufacturing. Please see Appendix A for a short introduction to the objectives and
key principles of the Lean Manufacturing principles).