Integrating Simulation Budget Management into Drum-Buffer-Rope: A Study on Parametrization and Reducing Computational Effort

Abstract

In manufacturing, a bottleneck workstation frequently emerges, complicating production planning and escalating costs. To address this, Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR) is a widely recognized production planning and control method that focuses on centralizing the bottleneck workstation, thereby improving production system performance. Although DBR is primarily focused on cre-ating a bottleneck schedule, the selection of planning parameters is crucial, as they significantly influence the scheduling process. Conducting a compre-hensive full factorial enumeration to identify the ideal planning parameters requires substantial computational effort. Simulation Budget Management (SBM) offers an effective concept to reduce this effort by skipping less promising parameter combinations. This publication introduces a method for integrating SBM into multi-stage multi-item DBR planned and controlled production system with limited capacity, aimed at determining the optimal planning parameters. Furthermore, we conduct a simulation study to analyze the effects of different production system environments, i.e., varying levels of shop load and process uncertainty, on both the performance and parame-terization of DBR and the efficacy of SBM. Our results show significant re-duction in simulation budget for identifying optimal planning parameters compared to traditional full factorial enumeration.