A simulation approach to traditional job shop manufacturing systems

Scheduling and organization of job shops and improvement of performances have been extensively researched over the last three decades and it continues to attract the interests of both academic researchers, practitioners and the industry managers as well. In the present paper a simulation model of an actual job shop organization was used to create a virtual representation of the production department of a company manufacturing mechanical components. This model has been used to evaluate the effect of different factors on the overall production performances, to define the best scenario and work organization. Shared vs. dedicated human resources and lot management policies are the main factors that affect the performance of job shops, in terms of saturation and efficiency of both machines and operators. The results of the simulation allow determine the optimal layout of the job shops, the way to share resources, the production scheduling and the lot management policy; the possibility to switch to scenarios based on cell manufacturing is evaluated as well.