The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 06, 2001
Filed:
Nov. 06, 1998
John R. Costanza, Parker, CO (US);
John Costanza Institute of Technology, Englewood, CO (US);
Abstract
A demand-driven, mixed-model manufacturing line design system utilizes Demand Flow Technology to design an efficient mixed-model manufacturing line. Concurrent manufacture of several products in a continuous flow, mixed-model product line designed utilizing the design system exhibits essentially none of the inefficiencies associated with mixed-model, batch-oriented manufacturing lines. The method according to the present invention includes a product synchronization step for synchronizing product flow between unit processes, a resource balancing step to ensure sufficient resources are provided at each process, thereby reducing the product cycle time at each process to be approximately equal to an operational cycle time calculated for each process, a cell definition step for consolidating constant volume processes, an operational definition step for grouping tasks associated with the consolidated processes within each cell, and an operation balancing step for defining additional cells based on actual product cycle time diversity. A design system according to this invention includes a computer system wherein machine readable code accessible to the computer system enables execution of the above described method.