Production quality performance of manufacturing systems with in-line product traceability and rework

In-line product inspection and identification are emerging technologies supporting the observability and traceability of the product state evolution in multi-stage manufacturing systems. These technologies enable the dynamic implementation of defect management actions, such as product rework. However, their impact on the system quality and production logistics performance needs to be assessed in order to justify the related investments. This paper presents a theory and a methodology to predict the effective throughput of manufacturing systems with product traceability and rework, jointly considering the product and system state dynamics. The industrial benefits are validated in a real system in the semiconductor industry.