OPTIMAL AND HEURISTIC INSPECTION SCHEDULES FOR MULTISTAGE PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

Consider a single inspection facility that can be quickly switched amo ng multiple inspection tasks. It can be used (for example) for detecti ng malfunction (or down state) production stages in a multistage produ ction system. We assume that a properly working (or up state) producti on stage moves to a down state in any period with fixed probability. T he stage then stays down until it is inspected and immediately restore d back to an up state. Our purpose is to schedule inspections among th e different production stages so as to maximize the fraction of good i tems produced. An optimal inspection schedule for a two stage producti on system is provided. For the general case of more than two stages, f our heuristics are compared. We conclude that the proposed dynamic sch edule is easy to derive, always feasible, and outperforms the static s chedules.