Modeling Product Variety Induced Manufacturing Complexity for Assembly System Design

Dedicated to my family who have loved and supported me ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my committee members, my friends, my family, and many others for their guidance, help, and support. Without them, I would never have been able to finish this dissertation. First and foremost, I would like to thank my co-advisors, Professor S. Jack Hu and Professor Yoram Koren, for their great vision, vast knowledge, and continual encouragement. Professor Hu inspired me to explore on my own, and at the same time gave me the invaluable insights and strength to continue when my progress stops. Word by word, line by line, he taught me how to speak and write concisely and precisely. Professor Koren emphasizes on intuition and understanding the big picture, because he believes, this is the most valuable piece that graduate students should possess and could use for their lifetime. I would also like to extend my thanks to my other committee members, Professor AmyM. Cohn and Dr. Ningjian Huang, for their constructive suggestions and valuable discussions. Professor Cohn is one of the best experts in Operations Research. I appreciate her inputs on how to efficiently solve the optimization problem. Dr. Huang not only serves on my committee, but was my mentor at General Motors as well. His industrial experience and expertise proved a integral part to this research. I wish I could also thank my former committee member, Dr. Samuel P. Marin, who passed away recently. Dr. Marin was a mathematician and the former group manager at General Motors. He was the first who recognized the value of this research and bridged the theory to the real-world industrial practices. Vividly, I still remember his smiling face when he told me, “I think you may be able to apply this to our general assembly lines!”