An Engineering Systems Approach to Production Planning of Optical Systems

Abstract

Production enterprises are continuously presented with investment opportunities to improve their production systems through the adoption of new technologies. When presented with these opportunities, enterprise leaders are faced with decisions that can have profound viability implications. A value-centric framework to holistically and systematically inform and support decisions is needed.

This research introduces such a strategic framework based on Engineering Systems principles and methods. Within this framework, Enterprise System Architecting and Technology Roadmapping methods have been adapted for production systems to identify stakeholder value, create investment scenarios as project portfolios, assess performance using Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and technical modeling, and visualize options using tradespace plots.

A case study, involving a representation of the National Ignition Facility’s (NIF) Optics Recycle Loop production system, is explored to demonstrate the framework process steps as a guide for its application. Each of the process steps is applied to the optics production enterprise resulting in a recommended project portfolio spanning 20 years. The baseline DES simulation predicts a throughput of 129 optics/month. After investments into debottlenecking, this was boosted to 261 optics/month. In addition, product performance forecasting predicts that after product improvement investments, optics damage threshold - a key product performance figure of merit - will improve by 67%. By using the new strategic framework, production enterprises can make decisions based on projected present and future value.