Modeling and Analysis of Integrated Planning of Production and Engineering Process Improvement

A clearing function that can capture the nonlinear relationship between workloads and throughput and also reflect capacity improvement by engineering activities on a multioperation workcenter is developed. The clearing function is then used to formulate an integrated optimization model for planning both production and engineering process improvement. Marginal cost analysis using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker optimality conditions provides useful insights into effective management of resources in a reentrant manufacturing system.