MATHEMATICAL-PROGRAMMING FORMULATION OF CONWIP BASED PRODUCTION LINESAND RELATIONSHIPS TO MRP

CONWIP (CONstant Work In Process) has been proposed as a new productio n management technique. CONWIP is a closed production management syste m in which a fixed number of containers traverses a circuit that inclu des the entire production line. This paper develops a mathematical pro gramming formulation of a CONWIP-based production system that solves t he problem of the order in which the parts are to be produced (i.e. se tting the order of the backlog list). Through this model we also expla in the major advantages of CONWIP over MRP systems.