SCHEDULING A REPAIRING PLANT TO ENHANCE THE MACHINE UTILIZATION & IMPROVE THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE PLANT

Abstract

This research presents an effective scheduling procedure for a tyre repairing plant in order to utilize the plant facilities in a productive manner while enhancing the total daily production and reduce total operational cost. Therefore, the proposed scheduling procedure mainly focuses on effective use of curing chambers in a near optimal manner by deciding the best possible tyre combinations to fill the curing chambers in each cycle subject to tyre availability, due date considerations, customer prioritization and profit factor of each tyre. This is achieved by formulating tyre selection preference order with the help of weighted function based on above mentioned constraints. Out of the number of standard batch combinations, the most appropriate combination is selected based on the tyre selection preference order. An algorithm was developed in Java environment to perform these functions. The simulations revealed that proposed approach can improve the total daily output of the plant considerably. There are number of secondary advantages of adapting this method: all the activities of the plant integrated into one schedule, work in progress can be minimized, total space utilization of the temporary storage areas can be minimized, and total energy consumption also be reduced. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that proposed scheduling approach ultimately improve the overall productivity of the plant.

Keywords: Rebuilding, Repairing Plant, Curing Process

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk