Real time scheduling and activity control in One-of-a-Kind Production

Traditional planning approaches in production involve the creation of schedules prior to beginning of the production process. In this case, uncertainties that are not expected nor taken into account at the planning phase can cause delays of these schedules. Common uncertainties that occur in a manufacturing system include machine operator absence, material shortages, and machine failure. In such scenarios, the manager has to react by manually selecting a new or revised schedule to ensure that production continues while maintaining the required performance level. All these challenges lead to poor utilization of resources, delays in deliveries and sometimes chaos in production. The innovation of real-time planning is to address the shortcomings of the traditional approaches by performing scheduling concurrently with the production process. To this aim, the thesis addresses the development of a MES (Manufacturing Execution System) to collect real time data coming from the plant and use them to perform a real time planning of the activities. Particularly, data about the used manufacturing processes, the running time of toolpaths, the features of the machines and the components geometric information have been collected. Based on these data, it is possible to compare the initial scheduling of activities on the machines with the current execution of activities, and update the planning in real time. The system has been implemented in an Italian company that produces metal sheet components for prototypes and small series in the automotive sector, which is characterized by a production with high complexity and high mix of products.