AUTOMATIC SCHEDULING AND CONTROL OF A SHIP WEB WELDING ASSEMBLY-LINE

The main subject presented in this paper is the proposal and design of an automatic production scheduling and control system for a robotised ship web welding assembly line at Odense Steel Shipyard Ltd. in Denma rk. The production on this ship web welding assembly line is a typical One-of-a-Kind Production (OKP). It is characterised by the diversity of the product types (i.e. web types) and frequent changes or disturba nces made to the production schedule due to the changes of product (i. e. the ship) or changes in other production lines or shop floors. Thes e characteristics or particularly problems in OKP make difficulties to automatically control and schedule OKP by traditional systems, such a s MRP systems. Hence, in this paper, a new production scheduling and c ontrol technique and a closed loop production scheduling and control s ystem are presented for automatic scheduling and control of OKP on a s hip web welding assembly