Smart Pegging and Release Control for Multi-product Production Testbed with Shopfloor Visibility

This research focuses on the development of coupled order-tray pegging and release control strategy for a multi-product production system. Pegging is a process of assigning work-in-progress parts to customer orders. Release control is to determine when, which and how raw materials should be released into the manufacturing system. Based on actual production scenarios of our manufacturing testbed, we build a simulation model incorporating real-time visibility of production status, and implement the algorithm such that orders are fulfilled efficiently and new production is pulled by the demand. It is demonstrated that the proposed strategy outperforms the as-is strategy in terms of the average cycle time of orders, since in as-is, trays of parts are assigned according to their registration sequence, and releases are scheduled based on plan. Moreover, the results feedback to the production system could support follow-up dispatch decisions.