This thesis is a case study using GERT (Graphical Evaluation and Review Technique) to control the WIP(Work-In-Process) in a compressor assembly line.
This method gives informations about how many items should be placed in each input to achieve a previously planned scheme with a certain reliability as well as what points of the process are in a critical condition.
Usually, WIP control has been treated by a computer simulation because of the difficulty in the explanation of the feedback activities in assembling operations and the complexity of computation.
In this thesis, GERT is used to an assembly line problem and WIP becomes a vector of parameters.
In an assembly line, parts and subassemblies are changed into final assemblies during the process. Parts, subassemblies, and final assemblies are each inspected before they proceed to the next process and the defectives are repaired and returned to the assembly line again. According to the network theory, these above activities are called feedback. In this feedback situation, GERT can be used to analyze the processes effectively where the other techniques used previously such as PERT(Project Evaluation and Review Technique) fail to solve the problem.
In an assembly line, there are many inputs, but only a few outputs. To analyze the network with many inputs, the mathematical complexity of computation is increased.
So in this thesis, simple method is proposed to reduce the complexity of computation and the results are then compared with the original solution, so this method is shown to be effective in analyzing a complex assembly line network.
