Analysis of a pull type remanufacturing control system

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate multi-stage kanban controlled hybrid systemswith arbitrary topologies. A hybrid system consists of manufacturing and remanufac-turing subprocesses each dedicated to its respective operation. Both raw materials and returned parts are used as inputs in the production system and these components areprocessed to produce the final product.A product form approximation technique is used to analyze the production sys-tem. The system is modeled as a multi-class closed queuing network. Average numberof items in each queue, throughputs of each stage, WIP levels of each queue, average number of backordered demands and effective return rates are some of the performancemeasures obtained from the analytical method. The results of the analytical model arecompared with the simulation model and the numerical examples are illustrated. Thena heuristic search method is given to search the minimum cost of the system. According to this method the number of kanbans is determined for each stage. Several numericalexamples are given for possible different scenarios for a hybrid system.