ORIGINAL ARTICLE An adaptive CONWIP mechanism for hybrid production systems Aybek Korugan & Surendra M. Gupta Received: 14 September 2013 /Accepted: 18 May 2014 # Springer-Verlag London 2014 Abstract In this paper, we consider a hybrid production system with two distinct production lines, where one of them undertakes remanufacturing activities while the other executes traditional manufacturing tasks. The output of either produc- tion line can satisfy the demand for the same type of product without any penalties. The realization times for demand oc- currences and service completions are random. In order to control such production systems, we propose a single-stage pull type control mechanism with adaptive kanbans and state- independent routing of demand information. The mechanism is modeled as a stochastic queueing network and performance measures are obtained for stationary behavior. Alternative static control policies are compared with the proposed policy with respect to an expected total cost function of these perfor- mance measures. An experimental design of L(2 1 3 7 ) covering low to high traffic densities is utilized for the numerical analysis. The numerical comparison shows that on the aver- age, the adaptive kanban control mechanism in consideration performs 20 % better than the best static kanban control mechanism. Keywords Remanufacturing . Hybrid production . Queueing network models . Adaptive kanban control . Markov processes 1 Introduction In recent years, product recovery has gained importance as a meaningful solution to the rapid increase in waste accumula- tion. Many industrialized countries have passed laws and regulations subsidizing and supporting all possible options of product recovery. Consequently, product recovery has be- come a profitable business option. Among all product recov- ery options, remanufacturing is the most sensible one as it generates value while retaining physical attributes of the prod- uct. Remanufacturing activities aim to bring returned products (cores) back to as good as new condition using minimum energy and effort. Companies that are involved in remanufacturing repair, refurbish, completely disassemble and rework, and upgrade cores depending on their condition in order to sell or lease them. While many companies special- ize in remanufacturing of certain products, more and more original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) remanufacture their own products. We refer to OEMs that engage both in new product manufacturing and remanufacturing activities as hybrid pro- duction systems. The main characteristic of such production systems is that the demand is satisfied with comparable prod- ucts manufactured by different facilities. Hence, both remanufactured and newly manufactured versions of a certain product coexist in the system. The demand is satisfied either with a newly manufactured product or with a remanufactured product when remanufactured products are restored to “as good as new” condition. This is usually the case for leasing systems or business-to-business suppliers of tools and ma- chinery. In such markets, the utility and the price of the product bundled with a comprehensive warranty or mainte- nance contract is valued [1]. Production management mechanisms are developed for traditional manufacturing systems taking one input source for each component of a product into account. These A. Korugan (*) Department of Industrial Engineering, Bogazici University, Bebek, 34342 Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: aybek.korugan@boun.edu.tr S. M. Gupta Laboratory for Responsible Manufacturing, 334 SN, Department of MIE, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA e-mail: gupta@neu.edu Int J Adv Manuf Technol DOI 10.1007/s00170-014-5977-2