Just-in-Time Production — A New Formulation and Algorithm of the Flow Shop Problem

Abstract

After the first oil crisis, Japan went into the low economic growth period and the market started to show saturation as shown in Fig. 1. Accordingly, customers’ needs have become diversified, and forecasting customers’ demands has consequently become quite difficult. Figure 2 schematically illustrates the market situations in the past, before the first oil crisis, and after the oil crisis, giving the example of the mug market. This example simply tells of today’s market circumstances of diversified customers’ demands.

Dr. Hajime Yamashina is a Professor in Production Engineering at the Department of Precision Mechanics, Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan. He received B. S., M. S., and D. ing. from Kyoto University. His research interests cover production and inventory control, scheduling and sequencing, quality control, computer aided manufacturing, FMS, FA, etc.