Dynamic bottleneck control in wide variety production factory

At a factory which produces a wide variety of products such as ASIC's or microcomputers, it is necessary to detect any machine causing a bottleneck and return it to a high level of performance for fast and effective production. This paper introduces a workflow control system called "JUSTICE/MORAL" (just time process control system/method of optimum-buffer restriction and adjustment logic) which dynamically detects a machine causing a bottleneck and feeds work to that machine at an appropriate time. The advantages of this system are as follows: (1) manufacturing cycle time can be reduced by an average of 13% and a maximum of 50% and (2) throughput can be increased up to approximately 10%. Part of this system has been installed in our factory. We have seen factory cycle time improve by approximately 20% in the two month period from July to September 1998. Also, the machine causing the bottleneck was found quickly; as a result, the utilization of this machine increased by 3%,.