Dynamic production control using a flow based formulation

The dynamic behaviour of production systems is explained to a great extent by the time varying flows of parts entering, accumulating, and leaving workstation buffers. In this paper a continuous flow formulation to model such dynamics is analysed, using the law of conservation of mass as the main governing equation. The paper shows how integral and differential mass balances relate to important production planning and control variables. The dynamic flow based model is then used in a simulation to investigate how different control strategies affect some key performance measures in the context of time varying total production capacity with local disturbances.