Development of Drum-Buffer-Rope Algorithm to Control Capacity Constrained Machine in a Bioproduction System

In Indonesia, Bioproduction system has much similarity with the Micro-Small-Medium Agro-industry (MSMA). The some special characteristics of MSMA are the use of conventional semi-manual machine, the importance of skill labor in operations, and less intensive of capital utilization. Recognizing Capacity Constrained Machine (CCM) is essential for balancing the process and material capacity. The CCM can be described as a machine capacity is close or equal with incoming material so that the fluctuation of incoming material flow possible to shift the CCM into a bottleneck condition of process. The objective of this research is to identify CCM and bottleneck in a MSMA process, and developing its control mechanism. The object study of this research is in half-fermented ‘Tempe’ industry. Single queue model with single-server and single queue model with multiple-server were used to identify CCM and bottleneck. The research result shows the workstation of soaking I process could be identified as the CCM and Soaking II could be identified as the bottleneck based on the average waiting time of each station. Drum-buffer-rope algorithm was proposed to control CCM and bottleneck condition. The arrival rate of each station in the bioproduction system was improved in term of balance process using the lowest service rate.