Abstract
Variety, quality, and rapid response are becoming a trend in customer requirements in the contemporary competitive markets. Thus, an increasing number of manufacturers are frequently seeking alternatives such as redesigning their fabrication scheme and outsourcing strategy to meet the client’s expectations effectively with minimum operating costs and limited in-house capacity. Inspired by the potential benefits of delay differentiation, outsourcing, and quality assurance policies in the multi-item production planning, this study explores a single-machine two-stage multi-item batch fabrication problem considering the abovementioned features. Stage one is the fabrication of all the required common parts, and stage two is manufacturing the end products. A predetermined portion of common parts is supplied by an external contractor to reduce the uptime of stage one. Both stages have imperfect in-house production processes. The defective items produced are identified, and they are either reworked or removed to ensure the quality of the finished batch. We develop a model to depict the problem explicitly. Modeling, formulation, derivation, and optimization methods assist us in deriving a cost-minimized cycle time solution. Moreover, the proposed model can analyze and expose the diverse features of the problem to help managerial decision-making. An example of this is the individual/ collective influence of postponement, outsourcing, and quality reassurance policies on the optimal cycle time solution, utilization, uptime of each stage, total system cost, and individual cost contributors.
Highlights
Inspired by the potential benefits of delay differentiation, outsourcing, and quality assurance policies in the multi-item production planning, this study explores a single-machine two-stage multi-item batch fabrication problem considering the abovementioned features
This study explores a single-machine two-stage multi-item batch fabrication problem featuring delayed product differentiation, outsourcing, and quality assurance
Since not many works can be found in the literature that focused on the exploration of the collective impact of commonality, outsourcing, and quality reassurance on the multi-item batch fabrication planning, we aim to bridge the gap
Summary
This study explores a single-machine two-stage multi-item batch fabrication problem featuring delayed product differentiation, outsourcing, and quality assurance. To rapid response to the customer’s variety requirements, a growing number of manufacturers are frequently seeking effective alternatives such as redesigning the fabrication scheme An example of this is to incorporate a delayed differentiation strategy in the multi-item fabrication planning with the existence of product commonality. Additional studies (Van Mieghem, 1999; Lee & Sung, 2008; Westphal & Sohal, 2016; Chiu et al, 2019b,c) explored the effect of diverse features of outsourcing strategies on operations management, production planning, and overall operating cost. Moshtagh and Taleizadeh (2017) explored a combined manufacturing and remanufacturing closed-loop supply-chain system featuring rework, permitted shortage, and quality-relevant return rate. Since not many works can be found in the literature that focused on the exploration of the collective impact of commonality, outsourcing, and quality reassurance on the multi-item batch fabrication planning, we aim to bridge the gap
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