Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Production efficiency is mainly influenced by two factors ─ satisfying customer demands and profit maximization. Some methods for optimizing the production are proposed in the literature, which are computationally expensive. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Production scheduling problem is addressed by using a single objective function and suitable operational constraints. Dual-Phase Simplex method is used to determine the optimal schedule for production and sales. As compared to conventional methods, the current method is found to be computationally inexpensive and easy to implement. The sensitivity analysis is performed to study the effects of parametric variations on the production volume. Findings: The performance of a quality management system, in terms of production efficiency of an organization, is based on the quality of decisions taken at the shop floor. A good production manager must be able to foresee all decision-related discrepancies and adopt preventive measures appropriately. In order to resolve this contradictory requirement, an optimized production scheduling process is generally required, which deals with desired type and quantity of output at minimum cost. A typical case study of Tema (Ghana) based cable manufacturing firm is considered to optimize the production scheduling problem. In this paper, a mathematical model for the optimizing the production of different items having different costs is developed by considering the problem as Linear Programming Problem (LPP). Further, the formed LPP contains mixed type constraints, which are solved using the Dual-Phase Simplex method. It has been found from the literature that the Dual-Phase Simplex method is computationally inexpensive. Moreover, sensitivity analysis is done to observe the effect of break-downs on the production rate. Application/Improvements: The idea proposed in this paper has a wide scope in various physical processes to optimize their parameter values. However, for multi-objective problems the Dual-Phase Simplex method gives invalid results
Keywords: Production Scheduling, Simplex Method