Mathematical programming representation of pull controlled single-product serial manufacturing systems

Pull policies may perform quite differently depending on the particular manufacturing system they must control. Hence, it is clear the necessity of having efficient performance evaluation models to select the best control policy in a specific context. This paper proposes a mathematical programming representation of the main pull control policies applied to single-product serial manufacturing systems. The proposed models simulate the pull controlled system in the sense that, if instantiated with the same parameter values as in a simulation model, their solution gives the same event sequence of the simulation. The proposed mathematical representation is also used for a formal comparison of the considered pull control policies. The new models presented in this paper can represent a base to build new efficient optimization algorithms for the design of pull controlled production systems.