Date of Award

12-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Computer Engineering and Sciences

First Advisor

Luis Daniel Otero

Second Advisor

Aldo Fabregas

Third Advisor

Troy Nguyen

Fourth Advisor

Philip Bernhard

Abstract

This paper demonstrates an approach to evaluating production factors related to schedule and resources based on changes to the production process. A discrete event simulation model was developed to evaluate different production factors, such as arrival times, number of entities, resource availabilities, and work in process (WIP) times, compared to the total yield at a production facility. This model helped to develop relationships between the required asset resource usages and the overall production resource allocation with the related effects to process wait times and production outputs. A comparative analysis with cost was performed to determine the effect that varied resources had on the total output to determine the optimal solution to increasing and/or maintaining the production yields of those prior to the changes to the production process. The model developed as part of this research serves as a framework for comparative analysis between production factors and cost composed of an array of test cases. The goal of approaching production based on related factors was to demostrate the effect that redesigning a product and the related production process has on the processing wait times and production outputs. Two scenarios were created to demonstrate the model’s applicability to different production facilities. The first scenario models a moderately sized, low yield production facility and the second scenario models a moderately sized, high yield production facility. The results helped to successfully develop a model that is able to provide analytical data to a business case proposal for optimizing production resource allocations. Future research areas were identified for extending this work.

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