Manufacturing systems are complex and require decision-making skills and analytical analysis. Managers and practitioners use a wide variety of methods to optimize the performance of manufacturing systems and control costs. The many processes and functions involved in building and maintaining these systems demand a high-level of knowledge.

In this course, you will learn about these various methods and processes. We will start with a review of The Manufacturing Process: ‎Steps & Types MRP Basics and Your First ‎Manufacturing Order. Lastly, we will introduce stochastic manufacturing systems models developed here at MIT.

This course provides ways to analyze manufacturing systems in terms of material flow and storage, information flow, capacities, and times and durations of events. Fundamental topics include probability, inventory and queuing models, optimization, and linear and dynamic systems. Factory planning and scheduling topics include flow planning, bottleneck characterization, buffer and batch-size analysis, and dynamic behavior of production systems.

This course covers the following topics: models of manufacturing systems, including transfer lines and flexible manufacturing systems; calculation of performance measures, including throughput, in-process inventory, and meeting production commitments; real-time control of scheduling; effects of machine failure, set-ups, and other disruptions on system performance.

Course Goals

After completing this course, participants will be able to:

Compare and contrast different types of discrete manufacturing systems

Describe terminology related to discrete manufacturing systems

Calculate and interpret common performance metrics for operations (e.g. cycle time, flow time, utilization, WIP)

Apply Little’s Law to determine flow time given WIP and WIP given flow time

Evaluate different ways of assigning operators to cells or production lines .

Explain continuous improvement philosophies and how they relate to manufacturing system fundamentals (brief introduction to Lean, Theory of Constraints, Agile Manufacturing, and Quick Response Manufacturing).

Leverage strategy deployment for effective implementation

Who Should Attend?

Industrial/Manufacturing Engineers

Operations Managers

Anyone Involved with Continuous Improvement of Manufacturing Systems