MODELING MATERIAL FLOW IN MANUFACTURING PROCESSES

Chandrapushpam.T1

Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, CMS College of Engineering, Namakkal

Dr.D.Ganapathram Sharma 2

Principal, SaraswathiVelu College of Engineering, Jambukulam Road, Vellore District.

Abstract

According to Goldratt, the flow of materials in a manufacturingorganization can be

representedby one of the four types V, A,I or T. The individual processesused in manufacturing

receive raw materials or semi-finished products as input materials and semi-finished or finished

products as output.A sequence ofthese processes converts the original raw materials into finished

products.In this work, the authorsdescribe a method for modeling the sequenceof operations starting

from the raw material arrival, individual processing times, waiting times in the queue before the

individual processes, machine break down, rejections etc. From this model, statistical information

pertaining to the processes, raw material movement, order fulfillment rate etc. are determined for

the various types of material flow – V, A, I and T using simulated manufacturing processes.

A method of fitting suitable probability distribution to the various statistical data is presented and

discussed.