Simulation of serial assembly, two stations

In our candidate's work, we compare different types of production systems. Categorization of these have been made in sieriella assembly line and in parallel systems with autonomous teams, and within these categories, a slightly more detailed breakdown.

Empirical results have shown that balancing, handling, and system losses are significantly larger for serial liner compared to the parallel form of organization. A rule of thumb is 40% of total losses to the parallel system and 100-200% for the serial counterpart. To investigate the relationship without the need for empirical data can be utilized simulation.

Simulation is one way, as far as possible, re-create reality (Wikipedia, http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulering, 2009-02-02)

By building a conceptual model of reality, transfer it to a simulation software, and then study how it behaves, conclusions can be drawn about the factors that affect specific performance targets. The performance targets are often referred to as outcome variables.

I have made a conceptual model of a very simple factory. The plant produces two types of products that can take some time. Each station allows a certain portion of each product (such as assembly station A does the front of the car 1 and 2 and the assembly station B rear of Car 1 and 2). By doing> 10 observations for each assembly task at each station, a distribution to be developed, along which future production may follow with a certain significance α. The distribution is then used by the simulation program for modeling a real process.

Simulation of parallel assembly, two stations

After that the model is verified and validated with reality, it may, simply, is adopted in line with the real system. Changes can be made with the model, to thus be able to easily examine how the real system would have behaved. The same distributions (pace) is used for the parallel system. What differentiates the systems is thus the losses between each step. It turned out that the parallel system assembles 42 (± 1) products per hour over 27.3 (± 0.8) for the serial system.

If all the assumptions from the conceptual model is true (not sure) and some other requirements also apply (can not be bothered to explain in detail) is singing the parallel system better!