The Strategy of Strengthening Efficiency and Environmental Performance of Product Changeover in the Multiproduct Production System

Abstract

Product changeovers are especially critical for multiproduct environments where key production system requirements are flexibility, time, and quality. Massive waste of production time and environmental pollution increase with changeovers significantly. It is noted that the green supply chain is gradually emerging, and the environmental policies in countries are also increasing pressure on manufacturers globally. However, how to improve the changeovers’ environmental performance in manufacturing enterprise are not entirely focused. The present study aims to raise the changeovers’ time efficiency and reduce environmental pollution in the multiproduct production system. This paper first analyzes the characteristics of multiproduct production systems and the causes of inefficient work and pollution and then extracts the problems that need to be optimized. They are the frequent changeover work, complex operation programs, and load imbalance. Multiproduct Production Fast Changeover (MPFC) is developed based on these problems, which integrates the Analytic Hierarchy Process, Entropy Weight method, Divisive Analysis, and Firefly algorithm. In addition, Divisive Analysis’s distance calculation is improved for flexible clustering targets. Firefly algorithm’s exploration, exploitation, and population coordination mechanisms have also been enhanced. The effectiveness of MPFC is proved in a real multiple flow-lines production case: time efficiency was increased, while the multiple industrial pollutions and key resource consumption were also reduced.