Personalized production in Industry 4.0: a CONWIP approach

Production technologies based on Industry 4.0 allow the capacity and flexibility of production systems to be increased, enabling mass customization of production. In this work, a production problem is considered where the customization of production is extreme, resulting in unique products. This type of production is known as One-of-a-Kind Production (OKP). Naturally, this type of production places great demands on the planning system, since the standardization of production is reduced to a minimum. In this sense, it is proposed to use a production control strategy based on CONWIP, which seeks to maintain the level of work-in-progress at constant levels. In turn, to improve the performance of the CONWIP strategy, new dispatch rules are studied and designed to improve the level of service provided to the client.