International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 2016

Vol. 29, No. 7, 805–820, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0951192X.2015.1130241

An approach of designing CONWIP loop for assembly system in one-of-a-kind production

environment
Guodong Huanga*, Jie Chena, Xiuli Wanga and Yiqun Shib
a
School of Economics & Management, Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, P.R. China; bSchool of
Foreign Studies, Suqian College, Jiangsu, P.R. China
(Received 22 August 2014; accepted 14 August 2015)
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Pursuit of the shortest cycle time does not enhance benefits in one-of-a-kind production (OKP) environment. The quality of
services is affected by the delivery on time for OKP enterprise, and a well-designed constant work in process (CONWIP)
loop structure can effectively improve the performance of assembly system in OKP. The designed CONWIP loop structures
have been tested by simulation under 2 assembly proportion conditions and 14 situations of fluctuation combinations, and
analysed relationship between cycle time and punishment of tardiness. Simulation test shows that some of CONWIP
policies have stronger robustness, which can perform well in several fluctuation situations. The authors propose an idea of
dynamic configuration for CONWIP control. Furthermore, the design procedure of CONWIP can provide a reference and
guidance for the application of CONWIP. This article extends the knowledge of OKP shop floor control and promotes
implementation of CONWIP in pull manufacturing system.
Keywords: OKP; CONWIP; shop floor control; assembly system; due date

1. Introduction changes will increase the lead time of product designing

The studies of one-of-a-kind production (OKP) focus on
product development and configuration (Xie and Tu 2006;
Hong, Xue, and Tu 2010; Aleksić et al. 2012; Li and Xie
2013), and production planning and scheduling (Tu, Chu,
and Yang 2000; Choi and You 2006; Li et al. 2011), but
there are few studies in OKP shop floor control mechan-
ism. The shop floor is an important realisation place for
product ideas and production plans. Without the effective
control mechanism in the shop floor, the tasks cannot be
completed on schedule, which will not only influence the
product delivery, but also disturb the established plans and
strategy level eventually. The effect of OKP to shop floor
is mainly manifested by the fact that OKP pays attention
to delivery on time, because customer doesn’t accept early
delivery or tardiness. OKP enterprise will increase inven-
tory costs when an order is completed ahead of schedule
and risk of tardiness penalty when delivery is delayed.
Despite the fact that the authors emphasise the impor-
tance of delivery on time, in most of the cases, OKP is
hard to guarantee the promised delivery time in face of
highly personalised products or mass customisation in
practical. The customer involvement of OKP is far greater
than the mass production and the multi-products and small
batch. Products cannot be converted into profits if the key
requirements of customer cannot be satisfied. To some
extent, the customer has a vote power over any proposal
in OKP environment. Sometimes the customer changes
requirements frequently in product development, these
and process setting, ultimately production lead time will
be extended. In some OKP shop floor with no scientific
management, work in process (WIP) has to be forced to
rework or scrap because the production data cannot be
updated on a timely basis and is consistently out of date,
which increases the production cycle time and cost.
Finding a trade-off between enhancing customer invol-
vement and improving response capability of manufactur-
ing is a challenge for OKP. Applying information
technology (IT) should be a fine solution, but the success-
ful OKP case using IT is still little at present, maybe it
needs more time to verify. Furthermore, only using com-
puter-aided technology is hard to bring significant change,
if there is a lack of a control methodology that adjusts
output according to production status.
From the point of shop floor, the actual cycle time of
product determines the completion time of order, the fact
that the order completion time is shorter than the due date
means the completion in advance and the fact that the
order completion time is longer than the due date means
the delayed delivery. Control of the actual production
cycle time is a key factor for OKP shop floor.
The OKP shop floor shows a characteristic of mixed
production. The mixed production needs to consider setup
time and bottleneck drift. The setup time is longer, and
changing frequency is more than multi-products and small
batch. Because a product on an OKP flow line is seldom
repeated (Wortmann, Muntslag, and Timmermans 1997)

*Corresponding author. Email: hgdtonee@hotmail.com

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

 806 G. Huang et al.
and the required processes are very different among types
of products, which makes impossible to shorten the setup
time effectively by the learning curve. Setup time often
shows an asymmetry, for example the setup time is 10
units from A product type to B, while 20 from B to A. In
manufacturing, the setup time is an essential factor in OKP
shop floor.
Influenced by product size, complexity, process routes,
enterprise scale and operation strategy, some of the OKP
enterprises use flow shop for production, the other use job
shop, especially for larger complex product that is fabri-
cated in different shop floors and converged into the last
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shop floor to assemble, which shows characteristics of
assembly flow shop and supply collaboration. In this
OKP assembly system, it is hard to control cooperatively
in the last shop that each shop floor has different workload
and takt time. The convergent position in shop floor needs
to be scheduled and controlled scientifically.
Therefore, it is valuable to research control mechanism
of OKP shop floor. At present, two kinds of control
mechanisms in shop floor have attracted interests of
researchers. One is proposed by Spearman, Woodruff,
and Hopp (1990), called as constant work in process
(CONWIP) that mainly aimed to control flow shop, the
other one is named paired-cell overlapping loops of cards
with authorisation (POLCA) by Suri (1998). POLCA is
applied more in practice than CONWIP (Riezebos 2010)
so far. Having a lot of guidelines, design steps or proce-
dures and practical method, it can direct the implementa-
tion of POLCA in the enterprise. The successful cases
further perfect POLCA. Reader can refer to Suri and
Krishnamurthy (2003), Krishnamurthy and Suri (2009),
Riezebos (2010) and reference in their articles.
Relatively speaking, CONWIP is short in the aspect of
‘how to do’. From the literatures about CONWIP in recent
six years, the research focused on the mathematical model
and algorithm solving (Li et al. 2010; Dalalah and Al-
Araidah 2010; Mhada and Malhamé 2011; Ajorlou and
Shams 2013; Park and Lee 2013; Renna, Magrino, and
Zaffina 2013), and performance comparison between dif-
ferent flow control mechanisms (Jodlbauer and Huber
2008; Pettersen and Segerstedt 2009; Harrod and Kanet
2013). Specifically, Pettersen and Segerstedt (2009)
argued that restricted WIP shortens the lead time and
variation. Although they also mentioned the fact that
CONWIP lacks installation guidelines, they did not intro-
duce how to install. Jodlbauer and Huber (2008) measured
service level performance of MRP (material requirement
planning), Kanban, CONWIP and drum-buffer-rope
(DBR) due to parameter stability and environmental
robustness. Most researchers agree that CONWIP has a
better performance over Kanban in unstable flow line.
Kanban is not suitable for OKP environment, its origin
is designed to control the stability flow line. Kanban
control, however, has been applied to the well-known
Toyota production system successfully. With Toyota’s glo-
bal expansion, plenty of experience of Kanban implemen-
tation is gathered, CONWIP control has a large gap in this
respect.
The artificial bee colony algorithm is used to minimise
the overall makespan by Ajorlou and Shams (2013). Park
and Lee (2013) developed an approximation method to
analyse a multi-product CONWIP assembly system with
correlated external demands. Harrod and Kanet (2013)
argue that CONWIP has the lowest mean and variance
of tardiness among flow control system in make-to-order
(MTO), when finished goods due dates are externally
determined and early delivery of finished goods is prohib-
ited. Renna, Magrino, and Zaffina (2013) proposed a
dynamic card control methodology based on the observa-
tion of customer demand fluctuations that is evaluated by
two moving average.
These researches cover some characteristics of OKP,
for instance, they pay more attention to cycle time, con-
sider delivery on time and tardy factors. But these
researches are not for CONWIP loop specially. The
scope of CONWIP research is still partial to theory, and
a few researcher notes that CONWIP is lack of implemen-
tation guidelines (Pettersen and Segerstedt 2009; Levalle,
Scavarda, and Nof 2013). From perspective of engineer-
ing, a suitable design of CONWIP loop is first considera-
tion in CONWIP implementation. Huang et al. (2014)
proposed a design pattern of CONWIP loop, eight
CONWIP policies were designed by this design pattern,
and then these policies were evaluated in order to obtain a
feasible CONWIP scheme. This article is a continuation of
their work. This article focuses on these policies, which
can be considered as a feasible scheme of OKP shop floor
control.
In the following sections, a design pattern of CONWIP
loop and procedure, and design CONWIP loop structure for
convergent assembly system are introduced in Section 2.
Simulation and modelling for loop structures in Section 3.
Performance is evaluated and relationship between cycle
time and punishment of tardiness is analysed in Section 4.
Finally, the conclusion and future work are shown in
Section 5.
2. CONWIP loop structure and the design procedure
2.1. CONWIP loop structure
In this article, CONWIP loop structure is regarded as a
parameter of CONWIP policy, but it also represents
CONWIP policy if the parameter characteristic of
CONWIP policy is not emphasised. Generally, CONWIP
loop structure has two ways including single loop and
multi-loop (or m-CONWIP), and it needs to consider
factors as follow while choosing the CONWIP loop
structure.
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
● CONWIP loop identification. Setting begin–end
position of loop has to consider some hard con-
straints in practice, such as, in order to prevent
bottlenecks drift, it needs to separate bottleneck
position, business process needs to set push–pull
interface, geographical space constraints, flow
shop or job shop, supply chain cooperation agree-
ment, etc. These factors determine the control span
of CONWIP loop and the number of loop.
● Determining appropriate WIP limit. WIP limit
determines the throughput and cycle time of
CONWIP loop. This is very important parameter
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for pull mechanism. A lot of methods can solve
the WIP limit in literatures, it is worth mentioning
that the WIP limit cannot be solved directly by
using Little’s law (Little 1961), because of the bot-
tleneck drift (Hopp and Spearman 2001).
● Types of CONWIP card. The card has two types
including the shared card and the independent card
(Khojasteh-Ghamari 2009). CONWIP card is differ-
ent from Kanban card, and it is not directly asso-
ciated with the product class. But in convergent or
divergent system, CONWIP card needs to consider
whether to share a card on many routes to transmit
information. This factor should be considered in the
design of CONWIP loop structure.
In order to design a reasonable structure of loop in prac-
tice, the CONWIP designers have to design multiple
schemes to evaluate and select according to the design
objective. The first problem of CONWIP implementation
is how to design the multiple schemes or alternatives.
Because CONWIP lacks design procedure and guidelines
for implementation, the designer makes schemes only with
experience and feeling, and cannot answer why.
A design pattern of CONWIP loop is proposed to
design the CONWIP loop structure. The design pattern
gives a feasible guideline to design CONWIP pull
mechanism. Under the instruction of design pattern, the
designer can get multiple schemes of loop structure pur-
posefully. Design pattern provides a framework for
designer of CONWIP system. The designer only needs
to pay attention to details and develops CONWIP system
according to the actual problems. The understanding level
of the designer decides the structure of loop and its
performance.
2.2. Loop design pattern in flow shop
In order to describe the begin–end position of loop clearly,
the symbols are adopted to represent the design pattern of
loop, as follows.
/: means separation position of loop or push–pull
interface.
807
&: means splicing or merging, it can be seen that
m-loops are merged into a single loop that controls a
route.
^: means several series loop, it can be seen that a
single loop are discrete m-loops that control a route.
It is the inverse process of merging (&), and often used
in job shop mode.
Production is regarded as a product is processed in the
upstream, and then enters downstream to process, finally
the finished goods is produced in the production system,
in which the interface point (IP) is a bridge between
upstream and downstream. IP is also called as the interac-
tion point (Levalle, Scavarda, and Nof 2013). Workload
balancing is the core idea in the five basic patterns
(Figure 1). IP plays an important role of transport hub in
convergent and divergent system, and it can be seen as
bottleneck workstation or hard constraints in a single flow
line. In other word, a position that IP is put into different
loop determines the scope of the bottleneck drift and the
discrete degree of fluctuation.
The five basic patterns can be combined to complex
patterns. Up&Down is a standard pattern of CONWIP
loop as shown in Figure 1(a), the dotted line represents
the signal circuit of CONWIP card, and the signal trigger
of CONWIP is located in the entrance of upstream and
exit of downstream. The other patterns are shown in
Figure 1(b)–(e).
2.3. Loop structure of assembly flow shop
Assembly system is roughly divided into two kinds. One
kind is that enterprises have their own fabrication lines
where a majority of main parts or components are pro-
cessed and assembly lines where the finished products are
assembled finally. Another is enterprises that have a core
technology of product and a few of processing or assem-
bling ability, and most of the parts, components and semi-
finished products are processed by suppliers, such as ori-
ginal equipment manufacturer (OEM). In this article, the
background of assembly system is the former.
Assembly system (see Figure 2) is composed of fabri-
cation line-1 (F1), fabrication line-2 (F2) and assembly
line (AL). AL includes assembly interface (AI) and assem-
bly station (AS). AI is IP locating the front end of AL
where upstream lines supplying parts or components to
AL are merger place.
According to the five basic design patterns, the eight
schemes of CONWIP loop structure are designed respec-
tively, as shown in Figure 3. No. 1 belongs to Up//Down,
No. 2 belongs to Up&IP/Down, No. 3 and No. 4 belong to
Up/IP/Down, No. 5 and No. 6 belong to Up/IP&Down,
and No. 7 and No. 8 belong to Up&Down. These patterns
and loop structures are described in details by Huang et al.
(2014).
 808 G. Huang et al.
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Figure 1. (a) Up&Down, (b) Up&IP/Down, (c) Up/IP&Down, (d) Up//Down (or Up/Down), and (e) Up/IP/Down.

Figure 2. The standard assembly system.

2.4. Procedures evaluation) is mainly to determine what method can be

Figure 4 is a general procedure to design CONWIP
scheme. The procedure has four phases, which are
design, implementation, commissioning and operation
and maintenance. Design phase includes initial design,
detailed design and assessment. The collected production
data (e.g. product parameter, production organisation,
facility layout, production process, etc.) are used to pro-
vide decision-making for the initial design. Assessment
method (e.g. system simulation or comprehensive
applied to select a feasible scheme from alternatives. The
implementation tools for CONWIP card trigger and
transmission are analysed in the initial design and a
complete implementation scheme will be determined in
the detailed design. In loop constraints, it needs to be
considered which factors will interrupt CONWIP loop,
namely, the loop identification will be considered. Loop
design pattern is to provide a direction for designing
various loop structure.
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing 809
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Figure 3. CONWIP loop structure schemes. (a) No. 1, (b) No. 2, (c) No. 3, (d) No. 4, (e) No. 5, (f) No. 6, (g) No. 7, and (h) No. 8.

The analysis results of loop constraints and design
pattern are used to design specific loop structure in the
detailed design. There are two ways determining an appro-
priate WIP limit. The description of Framinan, González,
and Ruiz-Usano (2003) is cited for the two ways. The first
description refers to given certain manufacturing condi-
tions, finding a procedure to obtain a number of cards that
makes the system perform acceptably according to some
pre-defined performance measures, this article called it as
static method. The second description refers to the devel-
opment of rules to change or maintain the current number
of cards of a CONWIP system, this article called it as
dynamic control method. In assessment, the comparison
among the CONWIP policies will be recommended. The
authors hold opinion that comparing with non-CONWIP
tends to discuss the advantages between theories that can
cope with different problem well, the optimal scheme
generated by this comparison may not always be the best
one under the same theory, and the non-optimal scheme
based on a theory does not mean that others with the same
theory are still non-optimal.
Furthermore, designer can modify scheme according
to situation of implementation and commissioning in the
shop floor. The detailed design can be modified when
some constraints or parameters are changed. If the produc-
tion style or mode changes, the initial design will be
modified and even the design pattern will be rethought.
3. Simulation modelling
F1, F2 and AL have two workstations in the assembly
model, respectively. One machine in each workstation,
 810 G. Huang et al.
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Figure 3. (Continued).
capacity of buffer store is unlimited. The sequence of job
that represents product or order is fixed, and machine
process a job at a time, regardless of the breakdown,
unit of time is minutes.
The fluctuation of each line is measured by coefficient
of variation. Assuming that the process time is subjected
to normal distribution, the fluctuation of process has three
levels, including: Low level (L) is that the mean process
time is 100, and the standard deviation is 5
(CVlow ¼ 0.05). Medium level is that the mean process
time is 100, and the standard deviation is 30
(CVmedium ¼ 0.30). High level is that the mean process
time is 100, and the standard deviation is 60
(CVhigh ¼ 0.60). A job is not processed on a machine
when process time is a non-positive in normal distribution.
In addition, α/φ/γ represent a fluctuation combination of
multiple lines, that is α field denotes that every machine
has the same fluctuation level in F1, φ field denotes that
every machine has the same fluctuation level in F2 and γ
field denotes that every machine has the same fluctuation
level in AL. For example, L/M/H means that all of coeffi-
cient of variation is 0.05 in F1, all of coefficient of varia-
tion is 0.30 in F2 and all of coefficient of variation is 0.60
in AL.
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
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Figure 4. Design procedure.
The assembly model consists of three lines, each line
has three levels, and hence the total combination is 27. But
13 combinations does not be observed in this article,
which are M/M/M, M/L/L, M/H/H, H/M/M, L/M/M, L/
M/L, H/M/H, M/L/M, M/H/M, M/M/L, M/M/H, L/L/M
and H/H/M. Because the range ability between M level
and L level (or H level) is smaller than the range ability
between H level and L level, such as using H/H/L to
observe gains more information than M/M/L does.
An observation repeats 20 times with different random
number generation, and a warm-up period of 50 jobs is
chosen. Statistics collection then continues for a run length
of 500 jobs. The experiments are conducted with assembly
proportion 1:1 and 1:n respectively. The definition of
assembly proportion and parameter setting are given in
the next section. The experimental purpose is to test the
response capacity of eight loop structures in different
combination of fluctuation in F1, F2 and AL. For each
811
combination of fluctuation, a full factorial experiment is
used to get the WIP limit when cycle time is the shortest
and throughput is the highest in a designed loop structure.
The measurement of cycle time, profits and robustness
under different loop structure is used for performance
evaluation and analysis
3.1. Parameter definition and setting
A concept that each of jobs needs different number of
components or parts in OKP was named assembly propor-
tion (α).α = 1:n means that a job needs a main body (or
component) and n components (or parts) to assemble. If
components or parts have the same process time repre-
sents the same type, otherwise has different types. The
concept is often used to draw the assembly flow chart and
make a bill of material (BOM) in practice.
 812 G. Huang et al.
Table 1. Batch and assembly proportion.
job1 job2 job3 job4 job5 job6
β 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1:1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1:n 3 4 4 3 8 1
Definition 1: J is a set of job type, and j 2 J. N is a set of
parts or components, and n 2 N. The notation of nj
denotes the j-th job needs n parts or components to
assemble. The j-th job assembly proportion is defined as
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α ¼ 1 :nj , and the set of nj represents {nj |j 2 J, n 2 N},
where nj = 1 denotes that CONWIP card has the shared
type, and nj = 1 but not all of jobs denotes the independent
type. Conveniently let 1:n express α ¼ 1 :nj . The para-
meters setting are shown in Table 1.
Definition 2: B is a set of batch, the j-th job assembly
batch is defined as βj , and the set of βj represents {βj |j 2 J,
β 2 B}, where βj = 1 refers to OKP here exclusively. The
parameters setting are shown in Table 1.
Definition 3: Let A and B ∈ J. Two-tuples relation is to
be defined as (A, B), it represents the setup time from A to
B. (A, B) Þ (B, A) is called as asymmetrical setup. The
setup time in this article includes: (job1, job2) = 120,
(job2, job1) = 240, (job2, job3) = 100, (job3,
job2) = 200, (job3, job4) = 80, (job4, job3) = 160,
(job4, job5) = 50, (job5, job4) = 100, (job5,
job6) = 100, (job6, job5) = 200, (job6, job7) = 120,
(job7, job6) = 240, (job7, job8) = 100, (job8,
job7) = 200, (job8, job9) = 80, (job9, job8) = 160,
(job9, job10) = 50, (job10, job9) = 100, (job10,
job11) = 100, (job11, job10) = 200, (job11,
job12) = 120, (job12, job11) = 240, and the setup time
of others is 0.
The revenue λj is integer value, which were generated
randomly from a uniform distribution in the interval [1,
100]. The weighed ωj is integer value, which was gener-
ated randomly from a uniform distribution in the interval
[1, 10]. Due date dj is set as follows (Harrod and Kanet
2013).
d j ¼ rj þ θ j (1)
In (1), where rj is the arrival time of job j and θj is the
cycle time of job j, θj subjects to uniform distribution in
the interval ½bminftjt 2 CTjgc; dmaxftjt 2 CTjge, CTj is
a set of planned cycle time of job j that is collected from a
run of 50 replications in the first come first served system
without WIP limit.
job7 job8 job9 job10 job11 job12
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1
3 10 5 1 7 9
3.2. Profit and robustness
The due date is an important factor for OKP. Hence, the
profit relating due date is a key measurement for perfor-
mance besides cycle time and throughput.
X   
R¼ λj  ωj max Cj  dj ; 0 (2)
j2J
In (2), where R is revenue for all of jobs, Cj is a
completion time of job j. The average revenue
R ¼ R=j J j, and j J j denotes the total number of elements
in J set.
X
S¼ τ qλ
j2J j j
(3)
In (3), where S is total storage cost of all of jobs that
early finished in the 3-th party inventory, τ j is a storage
time of job j, that is τ j ¼  minfCj  dj ; 0g, and q is unit
cost of storage per day that less than a day is approxi-
mately equal to a day. Therefore the average storage is
S ¼ S=j~nj, where ~n ¼ fjjCj  dj < 0; j 2 J g, and the aver-
age profit denotes R  S.
Robustness is a ratio that a count of the best perfor-
mance of a loop structure under all of fluctuation combi-
nation is divided by total number of combinations.
Robustness approaches to 100%, which indicates that the
loop structure have more ability to cope with fluctuation.
4. Results and analysis
4.1. Observation analysis with 1:1 condition
Table 2 shows the average cycle time of 8 loop structures
under the 14 fluctuation combinations. The coefficients of
variation of cycle time shown in Figure 5 are very low,
which means the statistics of cycle time in experiment
have a good representativeness. The throughput changes
between 0.003–0.005 (Figure 6) and their standard devia-
tion are less than 0.0001.
As is clearly shown from Table 2, No. 1 has the
shortest cycle time under H/L/M and L/L/L, and its
robustness reaches14.29%. No. 2 has the shortest cycle
time under L/M/H, L/H/H, H/L/H and L/L/H, and its
robustness reaches 28.57%. No. 3 has the shortest cycle
time under L/H/M, M/L/H, H/L/M, H/H/H and L/L/L, its
robustness reaches 28.57%. No. 4 has the shortest cycle
time under M/H/L, H/M/L, H/L/L, L/H/L, H/H/L and L/L/
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing 813

Table 2. Cycle time of 8 loop structures under the 14 fluctuation combinations with 1:1 condition.

Fluctuation No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8

L/M/H 1116.970 1110.769* 1113.221 1116.288 1136.768 1135.102 1123.446 1123.004

L/H/M 1055.952 1074.135 1054.291* 1063.618 1075.801 1080.393 1071.121 1071.402
M/L/H 1123.034 1117.549 1052.014* 1122.847 1136.686 1136.933 1133.869 1132.278
M/H/L 1051.590 1072.715 1052.512 1050.990* 1067.499 1065.852 1071.511 1071.503
H/M/L 1092.855 1113.892 1095.683 1092.368* 1105.497 1105.126 1121.277 1119.660
H/L/M 1105.040* 1120.595 1105.040* 1105.448 1121.926 1121.386 1137.007 1132.429
H/H/H 1151.607 1151.211 1149.610* 1151.067 1161.253 1160.103 1168.831 1170.262
H/L/L 1093.485 1114.404 1094.052 1093.023* 1107.037 1105.535 1120.006 1131.052
L/H/H 1114.416 1108.150* 1151.493 1115.704 1136.901 1135.740 1124.005 1123.250
H/L/H 1154.433 1149.857* 1151.493 1151.157 1163.040 1163.641 1166.852 1170.717
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L/H/L 1042.007 1057.295 1053.575 1041.228* 1052.522 1052.684 1043.041 1042.661

L/L/H 1112.588 1110.427* 1115.326 1115.013 1136.046 1136.34 1123.721 1123.984
H/H/L 1094.092 1115.208 1093.235 1092.530* 1106.323 1106.122 1121.305 1121.318
L/L/L 1041.193* 1057.239 1041.193* 1041.176* 1052.876 1052.454 1042.635 1042.889
Note: *Denotes the shortest cycle time in 8 loop structures under a fluctuation. In L/L/L No. 1, No. 3 and No. 4 the values are most the same which are
considered the shortest cycle time.

Figure 5. Coefficient of variation of cycle time with 1:1 condition.

Figure 6. Average throughput with 1:1 condition.

 814 G. Huang et al.

L, its robustness reaches 42.86%. These four loop struc-
tures can better cope with all of 14 fluctuation combina-
tions. According to the specific fluctuation, the designer
may select a scheme of loop structure. For example, No. 1
and No. 3 are acceptable policy for H/L/M, No. 1, No. 3
and No. 4 are acceptable policy for H/L/M, and No. 4 has
the best robustness for cycle time, which represents the
strongest ability to respond to fluctuation. If the fluctua-
tions including M/H/L, H/M/L, H/L/L, L/H/L, H/H/L and
L/L/L are often encountered in practice, then No. 4 can be
used as a control structure for long term. Considering No.
3 copes with 4 fluctuation combinations including L/H/M,
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of cycle time, which means that the performance of pro-
duction system is affected by different loop structures
significantly.
4.2. Observation analysis with 1:n condition
Table 4 shows the average cycle time of 8 loop structures
under the 14 fluctuation combinations. The coefficients of
variation of cycle time shown in Figure 7 are very low,
which means the statistics of cycle time in experiment
have a good representativeness. The throughput changes
between 0.001–0.002 (Figure 8), and their standard devia-

M/L/H, H/L/M and H/H/H, No. 3 and No. 4 can cope with
10 fluctuation combinations totally, that is 70% fluctua-
tions can be coped. As is shown in Figure 3, the position
of AI is separated control in No. 3 and No. 4. The only
difference is that No. 4 applies independent card to trans-
mit information. Conversion of these two structures only
involves IP nodes (AI position). Hence, the two structures
are relatively easy to convert due to the fact that system
coupling is low.
The above analysis is based on the cycle time. The due
date is important to OKP. The profit is applied to analyse
in the following, the results are in Table 3.
As is clearly shown from Table 3, No. 2 has the
maximum profit under L/M/H and L/L/L, and its robust-
ness reaches 14.29%. No. 3 has the maximum profit under
M/H/L, H/H/H and H/H/L, and its robustness reaches
21.43%. No. 4 has the maximum profit under H/M/L, H/
L/M and L/H/L, its robustness reaches 21.43%. No. 5 has
the maximum profit under L/H/M and H/L/L, its robust-
ness reaches 14.29%. No. 6 has the maximum profit under
L/H/H and H/L/H, its robustness reaches 14.29%. No. 7
has the maximum profit under M/L/H and L/L/H, its
robustness reaches 14.29%.
The robustness of No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7 are higher in
performance of profit than their robustness in performance
tion are less than 0.0001.
Table 4 shows that No. 2 has the shorter cycle time
than other loop structures, and its robustness reaches
100%. In the structure of No. 2 (Figure 3(b)), the IP
node (AI position) and an upstream branch are controlled
by single CONWIP loop, and which is the Up&IP/Down
pattern that uses an independent card to transmit informa-
tion in different branches of the loop. In the assembly
system with 1:n condition, the production in F1 can be
taken as OKP, the production in F2 can be taken as multi-
products and small batch, hence AI place needs stronger
collaboration and response. To improve ability of colla-
boration, the control authorisation of AI is transferred to
upstream branch of CONWIP loop, different branches
using independent card improves response ability and
reduces the waiting time of parts, which is the design
intention for No. 2 policy. In the actual production envir-
onment, the condition of assembly proportion 1:n is more
common. The authors recommend that the scheme of No.
2 could be reference structure to design m-CONWIP loop,
when focusing on cycle time.
Table 5 shows that No. 2 has the maximum profit
under H/H/H and H/L/H, and its robustness reaches
14.29%. No. 3 has the maximum profit under L/L/L, and
its robustness reaches 7.14%. No. 4 has the maximum

Table 3. Profit of 8 loop structures under the 14 fluctuation combinations with 1:1 condition.

Fluctuation No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8

L/M/H 49.050 50.558* 49.086 49.530 48.504 46.923 48.974 48.037

L/H/M 49.793 48.254 47.009 48.189 50.506* 46.480 49.145 47.262
M/L/H 49.355 48.620 48.013 47.494 49.745 49.550 50.335* 47.046
M/H/L 48.185 50.040 51.007* 49.996 47.734 48.933 47.256 47.306
H/M/L 48.850 47.945 47.221 49.025* 47.184 48.665 46.642 47.806
H/L/M 47.498 48.959 47.494 49.927* 48.494 49.332 46.258 47.418
H/H/H 48.105 47.794 49.077* 47.369 48.523 48.307 48.272 46.844
H/L/L 47.505 47.456 48.129 49.201 49.551* 46.285 48.900 49.087
L/H/H 49.113 47.677 48.829 45.283 46.819 49.395* 48.272 47.950
H/L/H 46.938 48.055 46.941 46.787 48.565 48.779* 46.718 48.569
L/H/L 47.155 48.079 47.121 50.909* 48.521 48.178 46.948 45.939
L/L/H 46.620 49.004 48.788 48.587 47.747 46.668 49.310* 46.652
H/H/L 46.118 48.187 50.425* 47.925 47.124 48.939 49.738 47.997
L/L/L 49.860 49.969* 49.856 49.855 49.082 49.467 49.737 48.389
Note: *Denotes the maximum profit in 8 loop structures under a fluctuation.
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing 815

Table 4. Cycle time of 8 loop structures under the 14 fluctuation combinations with 1:n condition.

Fluctuation No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8

L/M/H 1815.689 1322.001* 1914.603 1814.900 1655.961 1656.347 1501.995 1500.783

L/H/M 1903.477 1374.602* 1901.813 1904.103 1751.420 1751.928 1479.569 1479.335
M/L/H 1807.582 1316.594* 1796.067 1805.978 1646.592 1646.592 1504.027 1500.993
M/H/L 1900.370 1375.013* 1900.370 1900.015 1751.238 1751.733 2970.859 1479.882
H/M/L 1790.980 1323.294* 1793.471 1793.914 1646.759 1647.087 1501.483 1501.308
H/L/M 1786.094 1321.326* 1785.704 1819.281 1638.099 1638.005 1500.667 1501.634
H/H/H 1898.221 1381.297* 1898.221 1899.822 1741.063 1741.330 1529.548 1528.106
H/L/L 1785.318 1321.068* 1784.693 1785.123 1639.598 1884.610 1502.793 1502.826
L/H/H 1912.423 1381.216* 1796.116 1910.941 1749.691 1749.784 1503.907 1503.078
H/L/H 1676.221 1337.045* 1795.135 1794.430 1636.818 1636.820 1525.973 1525.289
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L/H/L 1902.281 1373.009* 1902.530 1900.560 1750.161 1750.415 1480.481 1480.504

L/L/H 1809.573 1317.183* 2372.416 1809.668 1648.971 1649.217 1502.451 1903.926
H/H/L 1893.623 1372.849* 1888.952 1892.670 1743.789 1743.739 1502.139 1501.452
L/L/L 1798.339 1306.031* 1798.365 1797.979 1650.370 1650.287 1480.070 1480.007
Note: *Denotes the shortest cycle time in 8 loop structures under a fluctuation.

Figure 7. Coefficient of variation of cycle time with 1:n condition.

Figure 8. Average throughput with 1:n condition.

 816 G. Huang et al.

Table 5. Profit of 8 loop structures under the 14 fluctuation combinations with 1:n condition.

Fluctuation No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8

L/M/H 48.030 44.381 47.980 47.472 45.460 45.460 48.154* 46.035

L/H/M 46.100 46.830 44.892 46.245 48.022* 48.022* 45.890 45.651
M/L/H 48.263 48.532 46.583 49.391* 47.977 47.977 46.333 49.275
M/H/L 47.780 44.557 47.531 44.686 48.163 48.760* 45.394 47.298
H/M/L 46.823 45.124 48.115 49.383* 46.201 46.201 48.148 47.215
H/L/M 45.665 45.176 46.036 47.762* 46.687 46.687 47.155 45.818
H/H/H 47.040 49.334* 46.829 47.883 45.640 45.249 47.829 45.894
H/L/L 46.635 45.951 46.635 49.585* 45.016 44.730 47.561 47.929
L/H/H 46.790 45.456 47.963 48.630* 46.957 47.888 48.113 45.780
H/L/H 47.100 47.865* 47.096 46.264 45.053 45.053 47.195 46.999
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L/H/L 44.845 46.532 45.271 46.292 49.647* 49.177 47.688 47.249

L/L/H 46.505 46.069 47.573 48.274* 45.554 44.357 45.272 47.891
H/H/L 46.655 45.609 47.100 47.519 46.489 46.489 48.026* 47.759
L/L/L 50.180 49.087 50.184* 48.163 47.567 47.746 46.591 48.921
Note: *Denotes the maximum profit in 8 loop structures under a fluctuation.

profit under M/L/H, H/M/L, H/L/M, H/L/L, L/H/H and L/
L/H, its robustness reaches 42.86%. No. 5 has the max-
imum profit under L/H/M and L/H/L, and its robustness
reaches 14.29%. No. 6 has the maximum profit under L/H/
M and M/H/L, and its robustness reaches 14.29%. No. 7
has the maximum profit under L/M/H and H/H/L, and its
robustness reaches 14.29%.
The robustness of No. 2 is the strongest in cycle time,
but its robustness is decreased by 85.71% in performance
of profit. No. 5 and No. 6 are acceptable policy for H/L/M,
and especially No. 5 coping with L/H/M both conditions
1:1 and 1:n well makes maximum profit.
4.3. Overall analysis
The loop structure not only determinates the control span
of pull mechanism, but also limits the level of WIP in
assembly systems. Loop structure plays a key role on the
performance of the assembly system. There is different
WIP limit between 1:1 and 1:n conditions, as is shown in
Figures 9 and 10. In addition, different fluctuation combi-
nation makes the WIP limit different, which also means
that setting an appropriate upper limit is very important for
the loop structure.
The total robustness (Table 6) represents that No. 2
has the strongest robustness and the best ability to cope
with fluctuation, the next is No. 4, and then is No. 3. The
worst is No. 8 in these schemes of CONWIP loop struc-
ture, which shows that the less amount of loop does not
always get better performance. Observation also shows
that non-optimal performance of cycle time for a loop
structure is likely to have a better profit, which illustrates
these eight loop structures have different control
objective.

Figure 9. WIP limit under 1:1 condition.

 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing 817
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Figure 10. WIP limit under 1:n condition.

Table 6. Total robustness of 8 loop structures under 1:1 and 1:n conditions.

Robustness No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8

Cycle time 7.14% 64.29% 17.86% 21.43%

Profit 14.29% 14.29% 32.14% 14.29% 14.29% 14.29%
Total 3.57% 39.29% 16.07% 26.79% 7.15% 7.15% 7.15%

Note: Total = 0.5 robustness of cycle time + 0.5 robustness of profit.

P P P
The change of robustness from No. 1 to No. 8 indi- Therefore, j2J λj  j2J ωj maxfCj  dj ; 0g  q j2J
cates that a key factor of profitability is delivery on time τ j λj > 0 and then,
for OKP with tardiness punishment, comparing to pursuit P P
of short cycle time and high throughput purely. A more j2J λj  j2J ωj maxfCj  dj ; 0g
relaxed due date and a shorter cycle time in systems will q< P (4)
j2J τ j λj
lead to lower profits if the cost of inventory is considered.
This article assumes that assembly model has the where maxfCj  dj ; 0g = 0 in (4) if Cj  dj < 0 and τ j
third-party storage, and the storage cost q that is quoted satisfies τ j ¼  minfCj  dj ; 0g ¼ dj  Cj , hence (4) can
by a third-party provider. The storage cost q becomes
be written as:
another important factor to make a profit. Theorem 1
shows if the quoted q is greater than the threshold of q P P
j2J λj j2J λj
that OKP enterprise can afford, it will lead to profits q< P ; let ^q ¼ P (5)
losses. The theorem proving is as follows. j2J ðd j  Cj Þλj j2J ðd j  Cj Þλj

Theorem 1: In the OKP environment, the more relaxed where ^q is a threshold of storage cost. If dj increases, and
due date, the shorter cycle time and lower the threshold of Cj decreases, then dj  Cj increases, that is ^q decreases.
the unit cost of third-party storage per day that OKP can
afford.
4.4. Dynamic configuration of CONWIP control
Proof: According to the formula (2) and (3), the gains WIP limit is an important parameter for CONWIP and is
condition is R  S > 0, that is restricted by the workload of production system. Under
the same assemble system, however, the above results
X    X show that WIP limit setting is restricted by CONWIP
j2J
λj  ωj max Cj  dj ; 0  τ qλ > 0:
j2J j j loop structure. In addition, under the different fluctuation
 818 G. Huang et al.
combination, WIP limit (Figures 9 and 10), the shortest
cycle time (Tables 2 and 4) and the maximum profit
(Tables 3 and 5) are not identical. An optimal CONWIP
policy is likely to be non-optimal when fluctuation of
production system has changed. Table 6 shows that some
loop structures have a stronger robustness indeed, such as
No. 2 and No. 4, but CONWIP loop structure with 100%
robustness (total = 100%) does not exist. Hence, If
CONWIP policy set is composed of many CONWIP poli-
cies with stronger robustness, the robustness of CONWIP
policy set will be 100%, which means a feasible CONWIP
policy can be selected based on fluctuation type. That is to
Downloaded by [EBSCO Publishing Distribution 2010], [Paige Riordan] at 22:18 15 June 2016
say, a production system can be controlled by CONWIP
policy set dynamically. CONWIP dynamic control and
dynamic configuration of CONWIP control are different.
The former denotes that the amount of WIP will be
adjusted according to the system status dynamically, and
the latter denotes that CONWIP policy including the
CONWIP loop structure and the amount of WIP will be
adjusted according to the system status dynamically. There
are two ways of dynamic configuration in the following.
● CONWIP loop structural with a stronger robustness
is selected as CONWIP policy. It adapts to a variety
of fluctuation dynamically after being configured.
But this way is only suitable for a few fluctuations
that are just coped with this situation in production
system.
● Applying CONWIP policy set to a variety of fluctua-
tion dynamically. In Section 4.1, for example the
analysed results in Table 2 are shown in Figure 11.
A policy set is composed of No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4,
which copes with all of 14 fluctuation combinations.
The shortest cycle time is obtained in each fluctuation
by this way. If the production system shows L/H/M,
the CONWIP loop structure should select No. 3 and
WIP limit is set to 15 (see Figure 12). In addition,
Figure 11. Different fluctuations with the same CONWIP control.
Figure 12 is regarded as an expression of distribution
function, which can be used as dynamic configuration
rules. On the horizontal axis in Figure 12, the fluctua-
tion type can be added or deleted according to the
actual situation, and data are also updated regularly.
Here, a basic procedure for dynamic configuration apply-
ing CONWIP policy set is proposed as follows.
Step 1. Fluctuation type is identified.
Step 2. CONWIP loop structure is selected from
CONWIP policy set according to Step 1.
Step 3. The optimal WIP of selected loop structure is
set to WIP limit.
Step 4. Regular monitoring and updating the data, in
case of fluctuation changing, Step 1 is to be executed.
There is no doubt that a diversification of policy set is
the premise to realise the dynamic configuration, using the
loop design pattern to design diversified CONWIP poli-
cies is a feasible solution.
5. Conclusion and future work
The contribution of this article reveals the fact that only
pursuing the shortest cycle time does not increase profit in
OKP environment. Enhancing the accuracy of delivery
time is much more important to shorten cycle time in
OKP. Setting a release date is a method to enhance the
accuracy of delivery time. However, due to many factors
changes in the actual production process, it will result to
tardiness punishment seriously if the release date of orders
cannot be complied strictly. Hence, controlling WIP limit
may be more reasonable in practical. Theorem 1 shows
that OKP enterprise cannot blindly adopt the third-party
storage, an option is to build inventory by itself. Second,
CONWIP is taken as OKP shop floor control, that is also a
meaningful exploration. The quality of services is affected
by the delivery on time for OKP enterprise, and a
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
Downloaded by [EBSCO Publishing Distribution 2010], [Paige Riordan] at 22:18 15 June 2016
Figure 12. CONWIP loop structure and WIP limit for different fluctuation.
well-designed CONWIP loop structure can effectively
improve the performance of assembly system in OKP. It
is worthy of mentioning that many studies about assembly
systems assume that the assembly proportion is 1:1 con-
dition, but this article shows that the performance of the
assembly system is not always the same under different
assembly proportion conditions for the same of CONWIP
loop structure. Third the approach of pattern-policy-
scheme is applied to many production environments
including OKP. Providing a feasible CONWIP scheme is
a prerequisite of successful CONWIP implementation.
CONWIP loop design pattern can generate a great number
of control policies. For the designed CONWIP policies,
the response capability test shows that some CONWIP
policies have stronger robustness, and keep up the best
performance in many fluctuations. It is realised that
dynamic configuration of CONWIP control may be more
suitable for OKP environment. Finally, the design proce-
dure of CONWIP in this article provides a reference and
guidance for the application of CONWIP. Meanwhile, the
results of this article also help the research based on
virtual supply chain driven by CONWIP.
In the future work, a mixed integer programming will
be used to find optimal solution that the completion time
for each order is close to due date. CONWIP loop design
pattern will be extended into job shop, and needs more
specification. Furthermore, three main problems need to
be solved in CONWIP implementation, as follows.
(1) The hardware control technology for CONWIP
triggering mechanism.
(2) How to construct CONWIP policy based on soft-
ware method.
(3) Integration supports of problem (1) and (2).
819
The above problems are overlooked easily in theory
research, but need to be answered in detail for implemen-
tation. In short, these problems will help to develop
CONWIP control system that meets the demand of prac-
tical enterprise. Especially, the solution of problem (2) is a
foundation of realisation for dynamic configuration.
Acknowledgements
We thank the editors and anonymous referees for their helpful
comments on earlier versions of our article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China under [grant number 71571101], [grant
number 71171114], [grant number 71472089] and the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under
[grant number 30920130111011].
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