Inventory control through a CONWIP pull production system

Production systems such as the CONWIP (constant work-in-process) pull production system have been widely studied by researchers to date. The CONWIP pull production system is an alternative to pure push and pure pull systems that lowers and controls inventory levels and reduces production lead time. In this study, a CONWIP pull production system was simulated in place of the current push production system at a food packaging company. ARENA 12.0 simulation software was used and a production system with two dedicated production lines was proposed to reduce the current system's complexity. A method for obtaining the optimum CONWIP level was determined. Various advantages of the CONWIP pull production system were analyzed and it was found that besides a reduction in planning complexity, the proposed two dedicated lines with CONWIP pull production system can also help the company to greatly reduce their total WIP and achieve inventory holding costs savings of over S$38,000 per month. In addition, the total customer lead time can also be reduced from 12 days to 10 days while still meeting customer demand.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Jean Jingying

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stephen C. Graves.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/63230

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/63230