Constantly growing customer requirements, increased international competitive pressure and rapid technological change require companies in almost all industries to offer a product range that is both rich in variants and cost-effective. The concept of flow production has become established in many industries for economical production in large quantities. However, as the number of variants increases, this concept is increasingly reaching its limits.
With the spread of highly flexible production technology and the networking of robots and machines in a manufacturing system, new possibilities are opening up for the configuration of manufacturing systems that combine the flexibility of workshop production with the economic mass production of flow production. Matrix-structured manufacturing systems are a frequently discussed concept in this context. This is a cycle-independent flow production process in which standardized production cells are arranged on a grid. The components and tools are transported flexibly between the production cells using driverless transport systems. This enables the manufacturing system to flexibly switch to other cells at peak workloads.
In this context, issues relating to the suitable arrangement of cells and allocation of resources are of particular importance. Due to the complexity of these issues, their heuristic investigation is an obvious choice. The aim of this master's thesis is therefore to develop a heuristic solution method for configuration planning in matrix-structured manufacturing systems.
If you are interested, please contact p.schumacher@tu-braunschweig.de
Important note on the supervision of Master's theses: A successfully completed Master's specialization (10 ECTS) in Production and Logistics is required!