Performance of a Shape Deposition Manufacturing Cell

As Rapid prototyping processes start delivering production quality parts, the demand for low volume manufacturing is increasing. This paper explores the performance of an SDM cell for volume production of one-of-a-kind parts. The SDM process is modeled from an operations perspective and a queuing network that implements the process simulated. On this simulated cell, a number of scheduling policies are evaluated and their results analyzed for cycle time performance and variability.