Event Details

Professor Russell Barton of Pennsylvania State University will present a seminar to the Management Science Department

Abstract: Real-time control has become increasingly difficult as manufacturing systems and their models become more complex in terms of job variety, machine flexibility and machine reliability. We consider a control policy to be a set of rules governing when jobs are released to the manufacturing floor (and perhaps to which machine in a flexible system). The objective of a control policy is to maximize efficiency (machine utilization)while meeting job demand times. A critical quantity in this planning is the quantile (say the 90% quantile) of forecast completion time for a job released to the system in its current state. We propose an analysis method, based on offline simulation of a fraction of all possible states, that fits a metamodel to predict the state-based lead time quantile. The rapid calculation enabled by the metamodel allows real-time support of a dynamic strategy for job release.Our approach builds on related work in quantile metamodeling, design of simulation experiments, and simulation in production planning. (This work is joint with Giulia Pedrielli.)

Bio: RUSSELL R. BARTON is Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain and Information systems and Professor of Industrial Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in operations research from Cornell University. He serves as INFORMS Vice President for Sections and Societies. He is a fellow of IIE and a Certified Analytics Professional. His research interests include applications of statistical and simulation methods to system design and to product design, manufacturing and delivery.