Publication Date

2026

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Chen, Shi-Jie (Gary)

Degree Name

Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

Legacy Department

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Abstract

Disassembly-based production systems, such as duck meat processing, face inherent operational challenges due to one-to-many production structures, short product shelf life, and volatile customer demand. A single carcass must be processed into multiple products at largely fixed biological ratios, while demand varies across products and over time. This supply-demand mismatch frequently leads to simultaneous surplus and shortage, resulting in unstable shipment schedules, excess inventory, and unavoidable waste. Traditional order-driven pull systems typically respond to orders independently and are limited in their ability to coordinate these interrelated effects.

This dissertation develops an integrated pull system framework for perishable disassembly processes, using duck meat processing as the motivating case. The framework links three decision models: (i) an order leveling (Heijunka) model that stabilizes daily shipment pace and product mix, (ii) a cutting allocation model that determines carcass-to-SKU assignments under joint-production constraints, and (iii) a dynamic inventory–pricing model that adjusts demand and processing signals based on inventory conditions to mitigate waste risk. The leveling (Heijunka) and allocation models are formulated as mixed-integer programming benchmarks and paired with operational heuristic policies suitable for rolling, day-to-day execution. The dynamic inventory–pricing model is motivated by a Newsvendor-based, reinforcement-learning–inspired feedback perspective and is implemented as a deterministic rule-based pricing policy.

The proposed framework is evaluated through a simulation-based assessment that represents daily operations of a duck meat processing line under perishability constraints and stochastic demand. The simulation compares a traditional order-driven pull system with the proposed integrated pull system framework. Results show that the integrated framework achieves more stable shipments and improved order fulfillment reliability, while significantly reducing inventory accumulation and waste.

These findings indicate that coordinated integration of order leveling, cutting allocation, and dynamic inventory-pricing can effectively mitigate supply-demand mismatch and improve operational performance in perishable disassembly systems. While the case study focuses on duck meat processing, the framework is grounded in structural characteristics common to a wide range of disassembly processing systems, including poultry, beef, and other agricultural processing contexts, as well as remanufacturing environments.

Extent

176 pages

Language

en

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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