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TITLE: Quality and Flexibility: Coupled or Independent?
SPEAKER: Dr. Jingshan Li
ABSTRACT:
Manufacturing systems are becoming more and more flexible. To shorten changeover time, reduce cost, and improve quality, many flexible systems implement batch operations, where different products are grouped into batches based on product types. Although flexible manufacturing systems have been studied extensively, the question of quality is typically ignored. However, flexibility and product quality are tightly coupled. Using the evidences from automotive manufacturing, as well as analytical results, we show that flexibility has a significant impact on product quality.
Motivated by this fact and scarcity of research on the coupling between flexibility and quality, a Markov chain model is developed to study quality in flexible manufacturing systems, in particular, in systems with batch productions. Closed expressions to evaluate quality performance are derived. Structural properties to address the appropriate batch size and sequence of products are presented. Methods to improvement quality through re-sequencing and bottleneck identification are introduced. A case study at an automotive paint shop is presented. The results reported in this talk indicate that analysis of the coupling between flexibility and quality opens up a new direction of research in Production Systems Engineering.
In addition, this talk will briefly introduce other recent research projects in production systems and health care management, etc.
