A dynamic delivery strategy for material handling in mixed-model assembly lines using decentralized supermarkets

Abstract

Material handling has become one of the major challenges in modern production management. Consequently, this paper intends to investigate the part delivery of mixed-model assembly lines with decentralized supermarkets and tow trains. Besides, uncertain exception disturbances, including tow train failures and adjustments of the production sequence, are also considered. To solve this problem, a heuristic-based dynamic delivery strategy is proposed, which dynamically schedules the route, departure time, quantities and types of loaded parts for each tour. To evaluate the performance of this strategy, it is used to solve an instance in comparison with the periodic delivery strategy, experimental results are reported and their performances are compared under different metrics. Moreover, a multi-scenario analysis is employed to determinate the long-term decisions, including the number of tow trains and the route layout. Finally, the critical storage is suggested to be set for each station to avoid part starvation resulting from disturbances, and its effect on the delivery performance is investigated.