Department of Industrial EngineeringArizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

On central manufacturing system concept is the optimal use of a series of pure push stations followed by a series of pure pull stations with semi-finished product stored at the transition which we call a junction point. Analysis of this configuration provides information about where the junction point should be located, how much safety stock is needed at each station in the pull portion. At optimum, it will suggest either an all-push, all-pull, or a mixed operation configuration. A modification of the simulated annealing algorithm is presented to conduct the optimization search. Simulated annealing is required because the objective function is highly multimodal Results of a case study from an electronic transmitter manufacturer are used to demonstrate the methodology.