Assembly Line Balancing

What is Six Sigma? – Certification, Training, Lean

Problem: The below product in a factory is assembled in an assembly line. This process needs to be re-arranged to find a balance that minimizes the workstation cycle time.

EXISTING ASSEMBLY LINE

Below is an assembly line showing list of 13 activities that needs to be completed to produce a product. The actual time required to produce each of this activity are as follows.

assembly-line-balancing1

The assembly line has 5 workers (work stations) stationed on the line as follows where back tracking is not allowed.

assembly-line-balancing2

The activities assigned to each workstation by production team are as follows.

assembly-line-balancing3

NUMBER OF WORK STATION:

Number of Workstations (n) = 5

TOTAL PROCESSING TIME

Tp = ? Processing Time of all activities

Tp = 30 + 50 + 40 + 50 + 20 + 20 +10 +10 + 10 + 20 + 30 + 50 + 10

Tp = 350 Seconds

CYCLE TIME OF EACH WORK STATION

assembly-line-balancing4

CYCLE TIME OF ASSEMBLY LINE

Cycle time of Assembly Line is the maximum time of individual work stations.

CL = Maximum (CW1, CW2, CW3, CW4, CW5)

CL = Maximum (80, 60, 70, 70, 70)

BALANCE DELAY

Balance delay indicates the ideal time on the assembly line.

Balance Delay (DL) = (nCL – Tp)/ nCL X 100

DL = [(5 X 80) – 350] / [5 X 80] X 100

PRODUCTION RATE

Assuming Production happens 24 Hrs in 3 shifts each of 8 hrs.

Production rate (PL) = Available Time / Cycle Time

PL = (24 X 60 X 60)/ 80

Hence with existing assembly line, 1080 units can be produced per day.

REARRANGEMENT FOR BETTER BALANCE

Total Number of Workstations ( n ) = 5

Total Processing Time ( Tp ) = 350 Seconds

Average Time per work stations = Tp/ n = 350/5 = 70 Seconds

Following rearrangement was done, so that each station could be allocated 70 seconds.

assembly-line-balancing5

CYCLE TIME OF ASSEMBLY LINE (CL) = 70 Seconds

BALANCED DELAY (DL) = 0, Balance delay is Nil.

Production rate (PL) = Available Time / Cycle Time

PL = (24 X 60 X 60)/ 70

Hence with new assembly line, 1234 units can be produced per day.

Increase in Production = 1234 – 1080 = 151 Units.

Percentage Increase in Production = (151/ 1080) X 100 = 14%

3. CONCLUSION

In the above example we could clearly understand that with proper arrangement and allocation of activities and tasks to individual workstations in assembly, we could increase production by 14%. In the manufacturing industry it is always necessary to re-arrange the activities based on individual workstations so that the total processing time can be optimized and the effort – well balanced, leading to optimum level of production.