POM Flowline Optimizer
POM Flowline Optimizer is a software system for the analytical performance evaluation and optimization of asynchronous flow production systems with limited buffers. Systems of this type are body shops in the automotive industry or motor production lines.
The computations are based on the newest results of queueing theory that are adapted to the specific requirements of flow lines, such as automotive body shops or machining lines. The results are available within seconds and the quality of the approximations is very good, which has been proven with the help of a large number of simulation experiments based on industrial data. It is our experience that many existing flow production systems would be more efficient, if they had been configured with the optimization methods implemented in POM Flowline Optimizer. We also observe that with POM Flowline Optimizer planners find much better system configurations in less time.
POM Flowline Optimizer can be used to study the performance of linear flow production lines with stochastic processing times as well as flexible transfer lines with deterministic processing times and failures having a linear or an assembly material flow. For each type of flow production system, very efficient specialized algorithms for the performance evaluation are implemented. In addition to the performance evaluation of a given system configuration, POM Flowline Optimizer includes algorithms for the automatic optimization of the number and the allocation of buffer spaces between the stations.
The following types of problems can be solved:
Given ... | POM Flowline Optimizer finds ... |
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Besides the standard interactive modus, POM Flowline Optimizer can also be used automatically in a command line modus. If applied this way, POM Flowline Optimizer can become part of overall workflow approaches for factory planning (e.g. a combination with simulation is possible). With the help of an XML-based data structure, POM Flowline Optimizer can be integrated seamlessly into planning approaches such as "Virtual Factory" or "Virtual Production", which are considered of Industry 4.0.
POM Flowline Optimizer is successfully applied by several major German and French automotive producers as well as by other companies.
Download a Powerpoint Demo of POM Flowline Optimizer
Related literature:
Horst Tempelmeier:
Practical considerations in the optimization of flow production systems, in: International Journal of Production Research 41(2003), S. 149-170
Horst Tempelmeier:
The Quality of Approximation Algorithms implemented in the Flow Line Planning Software FlowEval - Numerical Results, Technical Report, University of Cologne, February 2004 (Download pdf)