The impact of shared-production and remanufacturing within a multi-product-based flexible production system

Abstract

Remanufacturing industry gives an opportunity to rework defective products from a production system and make them useful again. When an industry remanufactures multiple similar types of products, every type of product goes through the same procedure repetitively. Repetition of the same procedure for similar products causes the overuse of a machine. This study investigates a flexible production system to reduce the overuse of machines for repetitive tasks. A two-stage flexible production system is considered where the common parts of multiple products are produced and remanufactured in the Stage 1. Continuing from Stage 1, the rest product-specific production of each product and remanufacturing processes are completed in Stage 2. Transportation of products uses a multiple delivery policy. This study aims to optimize the cycle time for the production process along with the production rate for Stages 1 and 2. The model is solved by a classical optimization technique and numerical results find the minimum cost of the remanufacturing system. A linear along with non-linear relationship effect of the shared-production process on the production cost are discussed. Results show that the two-stage production system with a shared-production process is cost-efficient and reduce the cycle time.