Simulation-based optimisation for order release of printed circuit board workshop with process switching constraints

Workload control (WLC) is usually employed to make order release to attain workload balance, satisfactory delivery rate and high production efficiency. However, in the real production environment of printed circuit board (PCB) industries, slight modifications in the product process shifts the bottleneck resources which leads to misjudge the effect of WLC and may ultimately increase the lateness of orders. Therefore, this research focuses on the order release problem of PCB production system considering main process flow and shifting of bottlenecks. At first, certain improvements are proposed on the classic WLC method and two order release control strategies based on process switching are designed to generate order release plan on the basis of Lancaster University Management School Corrected Order Release method. Furthermore, different scheduling rules are investigated along with the upper workload limits on the PCB system simultaneously. Finally, a simulation model is developed to analyse the impact of order release methods on the system performance through simulation experiments. Furthermore, extensive simulation experiments for different scheduling rules on bottleneck resource and different workload upper limit ratios are also carried out in the current research. Simulation results show that the process order release control strategy based on process switching has a strong adaptability in PCB manufacturing system.