Abstract
This case study was carried out for Thomas Bolton Ltd, a copper component manufacturer. The focus was on the first major production operation that is carried out in the foundry. This operation consists of three processes — melting scrap metal, casting it as ‘logs’ and cutting logs into ‘billets’. The timely production of the billets is essential as these feed a bottleneck process. The objective of the study was to investigate alternative methods of generating a production plan for the foundry that minimized costs whilst meeting the demand for billets at the bottleneck. The production plan was required to include a daily production schedule and a list of the cutting patterns to use when cutting the logs into billets. Thus, both the scheduling and cutting stock problems were addressed. A two-stage solution procedure was proposed. Alternative heuristic methods were investigated at the first stage and an optimal solution using Integer Programming (IP) was proposed for the second stage. It is shown that current performance could be improved using all of the heuristics considered at the first stage, but that using an IP-based heuristic method gives the best results.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.