Assembly line balancing control

Production scheduling and assembly line balancing control 2... 

In the apparel industry, the assembly process involves a set of workstations in which a specific task is processed in a pre-defined sequence. Before production, in order to achieve a balanced line, the sewing line supervisors assign one or mote sewing operatives to each task based on the standard time required to complete the task. However, industrial experience shows that it is difficult to achieve a perfectly balanced line because the production rate of each workstation is different. Imbalance occurs due to various factors, including fluctuation in operative efficiency, frequent change of product style, order size, prior experience and some unexpected factors, such as absenteeism, machine breakdown, and so oa Line balancing control is required to smooth away the bottlenecks. 

Erel, E. and Sarin, S.C., 1998. A survey of the assembly line balancing procedures. Production Planning and Control, 9,414-434. 

Kim, Y.K., Kim, Y. and Kim, J.Y, 2000. Two-sided assembly line balancing a genetic algorithm approach. Production Planning and Control, 11,44-53. 

The balance control of an apparel assembly line relies heavily on the shop-floor expert s knowledge, experience and intuition. The effectiveness of a decision depends on the subjective and ad hoc assessment of production line supervisors. Small order size and frequent changes of styles can make the matter even worse for optimal production control. With the recent development and adoption of real-time shop-floor data capture systems, real-time production statistics and progress reports can be generated to assist production line supervisors in line balancing control and bottleneck elimination. However, their deeisions may not be consistent even under similar conditions and may thus be non-optimal. 

FIGURE 20.17 An assembly BOM control optimizing mixed vendors lines with line balancing. 

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