A Technical Note: Optimal Manpower Assignment To Injection

The northern Illinois manufacturing facility of a major US corporation experienced a problem in achieving good direct-labor utilization in the manning of newly installed automatic injection molding machines. An industrial engineering effort was ordered to develop a computer system capable of determi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIndustrial management (Des Plaines) Vol. 29; no. 6; p. 31
Main Authors Chen, Jack, Saxena, Umesh
Format Magazine Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Norcross Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) 01.11.1987
Subjects
Blue collar workers
Computer based
Heuristic
Implementations
Input output
Integer programming
Mathematical models
Mathematical programming
Operations research
Procedures
Scheduling
Workforce planning
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Summary:The northern Illinois manufacturing facility of a major US corporation experienced a problem in achieving good direct-labor utilization in the manning of newly installed automatic injection molding machines. An industrial engineering effort was ordered to develop a computer system capable of determining the minimum number of operators needed to attend the machines. The integer 0-1 mathematical programming method was rejected for the assignment because it had 300 constraints and 2,000 variables. Heuristic procedures were considered and accepted because, even though they could not guarantee optimal solution, the heuristic approach could be easily modified to fit the expectations of the user. An algorithm was developed to solve the problem and the input screen was designed with ease of use by nontechnical employees in mind. Trial implementation of the completed program revealed that: 1. the model could reduce per shift labor requirements by up to 2 operators, and 2. improved scheduling, rescheduling, and operation utilization could be realized.
ISSN:0019-8471