Is full skill the best configuration for seru production system?

Abstract

Seru production system (SPS) is now widely adopted in Japanese manufacturing firms to deal with the dynamic uncertain demand. Multi-skilled workers and compact layout make SPS takes the advantage of both efficiency and flexibility. In this paper, we compared the fulfill rate of three skill levels of SPS (single-skilled, long chain two-skilled and full-skilled). The purpose of this paper is to testify which skill level performs best for implementing SPS under fluctuated demand. On this basis, we consider the efficiency decline factor (EDF) which represents the processing time of a worker will be longer when he serves more product types. Scenario decomposition method is adopted to estimate the fulfill rate of three skill-leveled SPS. Numerical experiments show that fulfill rate of long chain two-skilled SPS is almost the same as full-skilled SPS, while single-skilled SPS' fulfill rate decline significantly with the growing of demand fluctuation. Moreover, with considering of EDF, long chain two-skilled SPS performs the best among them.