Automatic scheduling and control of a ship web welding assembly line

The main subject presented in this paper is the proposal and design of an automatic production scheduling and control system for a robotised ship web welding assembly line at Odense Steel Shipyard Ltd. in Denmark. The production on this ship web welding assembly line is a typical One-of-a-Kind Production (OKP). It is characterised by the diversity of the product types (i.e. web types) and frequent changes or disturbances made to the production schedule due to the changes of product (i.e. the ship) or changes in other production lines or shop floors. These characteristics or particularly problems in OKP make difficulties to automatically control and schedule OKP by traditional systems, such as MRP systems. Hence, in this paper, a new production scheduling and control technique and a closed loop production scheduling and control system are presented for automatic scheduling and control of OKP on a ship web welding assembly