POLCA and CONWIP performance in a divergent production line: an automotive case study

Production control mechanisms have been broadly investigated by researchers, where each type of production control mechanism has different performance depending on the situation. However, the situation with high variety products in a divergent production line has been rarely studied. This paper presents a study on the applicability of four different production control mechanism; three different variants of POLCA as well as one type of CONWIP control in an automotive production company with high variety of products and divergent line. ExtendSim simulation software has been used for discrete event simulation in order to analyse the production line and compare strategies. The main criteria for comparing the performance were throughput, shop floor throughput time and level of work in process (WIP). The study shows that m-CONWIP (as a variant of CONWIP) is recommended in this situation, as it leads to more reduction in WIP amount and throughput time, while throughput value does not drop. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013