Performance evaluation for a footwear manufacturing system with multiple production lines and different station failure rates

This paper develops a three-phase procedure to measure the performance of a highly value-added footwear manufacturing system taking reworking actions into account, in which the system consists of multiple production lines. We mainly address the system reliability as a performance indicator to evaluate the possibility of demand satisfaction. First, we construct the manufacturing system as a manufacturing network by graphical transformation and decomposition. Second, capability analysis is implemented to determine the input flow of each station based on the manufacturing network. Third, a simple algorithm is proposed to generate all minimal capacity vectors that stations should provide to satisfy the given demand. We evaluate the system reliability in terms of the minimal capacity vectors. A further decision making issue is discussed to decide a reliable production strategy. Whenever the system state changes, the proposed performance evaluation procedure can be implemented easily and flexibly.