Flödesoptimering vid Umeå mejeri : Optimering av produktionssekvens via genetisk sökalgoritm

Sammanfattning: Norrmejerier’s supply of raw material fluctuates during different periods of the year. During the months where the company receives the most milk there is a need of an increase in cheese production in order to refine the milk in a more value creating way. To enable an increase in the production the process of the cheese department in Umeå is mapped. To determine the critical parts of the process a month’s production is simulated in a discrete event system.  Today the department produces eight different cheese types of which they aim to carry a constant partition. All process times except the one for the last process step are independent on the cheese type produced. The process time for the last leg differs with up to 70% depending on the cheese type. Hence the total production volume depends on the order in which the different types of cheese are produced, the production sequence.  In this thesis we optimize the production sequence with a genetic search algorithm. Given the predetermined distribution of cheese types a set of production sequences is created which are tested against a model imitating the process. The set of sequences is gradually improved through the genetic algorithm to finally reach a solution considered good enough. This enables us to derive the maximum capacity of the process and determine its bottlenecks.  This study concludes that a production increase of 16,6% can be achieved by additional staff, adjusted work routines and an optimized production sequence. To further increase the production, an increased capacity of the first part of the process is required, that being the pasteurization step. Given an increase in the pasteurization step the next bottleneck would appear in the last part of the process, where the cheese is placed in a salt brine.