Back to results
US 6,633,790 B2Granted
Systems and methods for optimizing a production facility
AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorYuri Gartstein
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Systems and methods are provided for optimizing a production facility that includes workstations for producing products. The method involves utilizing an objective function to find optimal production rates of the products.
Claims19
A method for optimizing a production facility having a plurality of workstations for producing products, the method comprising the steps of
- for each product, finding a bottleneck rate representing the inverse of a maximum effective processing time of one of workstations of the plurality of workstations;
- for each product, associating a production rate;
- and
- computing optimal production rates for the plurality of workstations by utilizing an objective function of the bottleneck rates and the production rates.
1 more element
A production facility comprising
- a) at least one workstation for producing products, each product having a bottleneck rate representing the inverse of a maximum effective processing time of the at least one workstation;
- and
- b) a central processor having instructions to input the bottleneck rate of each product, and to output an optimal production rate for each product;
- wherein the instructions utilize an objective function of the bottleneck rate of each product to output the optimal production rate for each product.
1 more element
A method for optimizing a production facility that produces Np products using Nw workstations, where Np and Nw are natural numbers, the method comprising the steps of:
- for each of the Np products, finding a bottleneck rate representing the inverse of a maximum effective processing time of the Nw workstations, the bottleneck rate of product j being denoted by rjb, where j=1,2, . . . , or Np;
- for each of the Np products, associating a production rate, the production rate of product j being denoted by uj, where j=1,2, . . . , or Np;
- and
- computing optimal production rates by utilizing an objective function of r1b, r2b, . . . , rNpb, and u1, u2, . . . , uNp.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.