Computation Section
Process Flow Add-in

 


The Process Flow Add-in provides a tool to analyze and design manufacturing systems. Four principal activities are supported as indicated in the figure above and described in the remainder of this section.

When it is installed, the OM_IE menu includes the entries shown at the left. The first two items under Process Flow are used to enter or change data defining the manufacturing system. Process Economics performs an analysis to determine the requirements for resources and raw materials for given production rates. The Refresh Functions should be used when opening a model created on a different computer. All buttons and functions created by the add-in are replaced by this command.

Process flow analysis assumes steady-state flow through the system. The principal abstraction of this model is that it neglects the variability that is often present in flow systems. It also neglects the restrictions imposed by scheduling the timing of production. Still a variety of important questions can be answered. For a system with a number of products, resources and raw materials, the analysis can find the average utilization of resources, identify the bottleneck resources, estimate raw material requirements and construct a from-to chart between the physical resources of the system.

If you do not know how to use Excel add-ins, be sure to read the instructions before using this add-in.


  
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Operations Management / Industrial Engineering
by Paul A. Jensen
Copyright 2004 - All rights reserved

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