Decision making for fast productivity ramp-up of manufacturing systems

Frequent changes in demand and production context call for frequent modifications in manufacturing systems, which can be realized by reconfigurations. After a modification, a manufacturing system usually fails short in delivering the expected production performance, due to an increased production of defective items and unexpected machine failures caused by incomplete or inadequate changes/reconfigurations implemented at physical or control levels. The time between the production of the first part and the stable production of good parts at the target effective throughput level is called the ramp-up time. Labor-intensive, time-consuming and expensive interventions are needed to understand and address issues that affect ramp-up. This essay provides a comprehensive overview on the topic, by addressing the following aspects: (i) definition of productivity ramp-up and brief explanation of the problem, (ii) research presented in the literature as solution approaches, (iii) selection of methodologies and their implementation, (iv) examples of applications, (v) research directions.