Integration of order review and release and output control with worker's allocation in a pure flow shop

With the increase of competitiveness and customer customization requirements, companies' capability to predict and shorten lead-time is becoming an order winner factor. This is particularly crucial for high variability mix and low volume make-to-order companies. Production Planning and Control aims at the alignment between capacity and demand in order to improve production system performance along with lead-time reduction. Workload control is a planning production and control concept developed for high-variety low-volume companies. It aims at controlling the workload in the system by mean of two mechanisms: the input control and the output control. The former regulates the release of new orders in the system, while the latter controls the production capacity. Most of the existing studies focused only on input control, while the output control has been quite overlooked. Moreover, the few studies that combine the two controls were interested in showing the effect on performances and did not consider a specific output control strategy: they operationalized capacity adjustments as decreases of the processing time. This paper is a preliminary step in filling this gap: input control in the form of order review and release and worker's allocation, as capacity adjustments strategy, are integrated in a pure flow shop. Worker's allocation is meant not to increase the overall capacity of the system but to shift idleness periods of workers. Order review and release and Output Control integration (ORROCI) model is presented, showing how the two control mechanisms can be integrated and tested, through simulation. It takes into account both load distribution and capacity available in the system and it transfers workers only when there are imbalances amongst stations load. Preliminary results show that order review and release and worker's allocation can be successfully integrated, achieving superior performances. Further researches can be pursed testing different labor flexibility and efficiency levels, along with different where, when and who rule concerning worker's allocation.