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Identifying and investigating the need for optimal In Process Kanbans (IPKs) for a complex manufacturing environment is the need of the time. Multiple simulations are required to arrive at the number of Kanbans required and the amount of part quantities it needs to store to achieve maximum throughput. In house developed tool is used to simulate the manufacturing system. The tool works on exhaustive search optimization algorithm to maximize the throughput of the manufacturing system by maintaining the minimum cost of the system. The location and size of the IPK is optimized using this tool. Since no analytical solution is possible we use optimization algorithms in conjunction with the simulation tool. We demonstrate our approach in this paper with the help of a case study. We observe with regards to the case study, that the optimal location of the IPK is vital to achieve maximum throughput as compared to the optimal size of the IPK.

Weight reduction in construction equipment is sought to achieve energy conservation and also to comply with the vehicle safety and compliance regulations, managing the weight distribution across the rear and the front end of the equipment to achieve the optimum balancing. Of late the thrust on product weight has increased along with reduced time to market, leading to increased usage of structural optimization methods. This has been further supported by the availability of high performance computing at relatively low cost. VOC and CTQ tools provided the motivation and initial screening of the design variables. The structural optimization software provides an integrated platform for analysis as well as optimization of components. In this work, an optimization tool has been used for size and shape optimization of a construction equipment assembly and a commercial FEA package was used for verification and validation of the results.