Delft University of Technology
Faculty Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering Transport Technology / Logistic Engineering
A. Groothedde Comparison of order systems in a hybrid manufacturing environment. Computer program, Report 99.3.LT.5215, Transport Technology, Logistic Engineering.
This document is the result of an assignment of the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the TU Delft that aims to present an application of JAVA as simulation program. This application concerns a simulation program that compares the performance of different order systems in a hybrid manufacturing environment.
A hybrid manufacturing system uses two production processes to end up with the finished (serviceable) goods: manufacturing and remanufacturing. The input at manufacturing is raw material that is assembled and transformed to the end product. At the other hand, remanufacturing uses as input returned goods that after inspection (to assess the quality) are upgraded to serviceable goods that are not inferior to the end products of the manufacturing process.
It is obvious that the production control of a hybrid manufacturing system is more complex than in the case of conventional production systems. The environment of a hybrid manufacturing system implies much more uncertainties (return rate of used products, inspection results) than the conventional systems.
A thesis of Van der Laan [E. van der Laan The effects of Remanufacturing on Inventory Control, doctoral dissertation Erasmus University Rotterdam, Nr. 28 of PhD-series 'In general management', Eburon, Delft (1997)] treated the problem of production control in a hybrid manufacturing system. Van der Laan discussed in his thesis some variants of a certain order system that we call the Van der Laan-system. This system is discussed later in this document.
In this thesis the performance of the Van der system will be compared to the so-called Silver-Meal-system. In contrast with the Van der Laan-system, the Silver-Meal-system is a very simple order system.
A simulation program has been developed in JAVA to compare the performance of both order systems. In the design of the JAVA program that was written for this assignment, benefit is taken from the object-oriented structure of JAVA. Simple objects have been constructed which reflect reality. The concept of inheritance is used to avoid the multiple definition of similar object structures in the program. It resulted in a clear and flexible program. Reports on Logistic Engineering (in Dutch)
