Compound Dynamic Event Metamodels for Electronic Assembly Line Systems

In the assembly line systems of the electronics industry, production controls based on steady-state conditions have proved ineffectual in coping with dynamic events, such as machine breakdowns, part supply shortages, and high priority job order processing, which can occur individually or simultaneously. There are few tools that give results quickly as to how many assemblies will be delayed by a dynamic event and how long it will take to recover from the impact. Computer simulation is available, but its lengthy execution time has hindered its application in real time., Previous research discovered that the patterns of these dynamic events can be represented by metamodels in the solution form of first order systems. In this paper, these results are unified and it is further shown that compound dynamic event metamodels can be developed from the individual metamodels using linear additivity. These metamodels are fit to the output from the simulation; and the resulting equations can be used in real time to measure the number of assemblies that are delayed due to the dynamic events. To demonstrate the potential application of compound dynamic event metamodels for decision making in real-time production control, a Decision Support System (DSS) is described that contains the dynamic metamodels in its model base. With this program, the impact of the dynamic events on production can be obtained virtually instantaneously. A case study is presented to support this conclusion.