Colloquia

Summary

Altis is a small business-to-business supplier located in Wiuwert, Frisia specializing in the production of wooden panels for the furniture industry. Due to the high demand for different products, Altis must be able to produce many combinations and variants of products. The large variety of products makes Altis unable to stock most of the products and therefore produces mostly on a make-to-order basis.

The demand for wood panels has been changing over the past few years. Due to the improved integration of the Eastern European countries the large volume orders have been shifting towards these more lower wage countries. Simultaneously, the demand for customized lower volume orders has increased drastically. The main problem with this issue is that the current manufacturing process of Altis lacks insight for the relevant stakeholders. This master thesis aims to select a fitting solution for the current manufacturing environment.

The goal of this thesis is to understand what influence the mix of jobs has on the current facility.  How can Altis estimate and optimize the available weekly production capacity of its panel division, and what factors influence this available capacity.

To answer that question a method is proposed for determining both the flow and scheduling of a diverse mix of orders. A process planning tool is developed to generate create process plans for each order as well as a scheduling tool that can optimize a schedule while taking into account multi-functional machines and alternative processing options.

It is shown that these tools can generate process plans for a large variety of orders. Furthermore the scheduling tool is able to optimize a schedule for a large amount of jobs within a reasonable amount time. Giving Altis the means to determine how long a certain mix of products will influence the production capability.