ENHANCEMENT OF ASSEMBLY LINE EFFICIENCY WITH OPTIMIZATION OF PRODUCTIVITY

Manufacturing process is a process of producing and creating a product with the use of technologies and machinery resources. In manufacturing process there are three dimensions, which are important in improving the production system. These are cost, quality, and speed that can be considered as basics of every process. In this thesis speed of the manufacturing process is enhanced, which leads to acquire the production orders in given time and also reduces the number of dropped orders. Assembly lines are the part of manufacturing process to convert raw materials into finished products. Considering optimization problems in assembly lines, applying PSO algorithms to the established model could lead to efficient manufacturing. PSO algorithm is a programming search technique for maximizing productivity, maximizing line efficiency and reducing production time. This research work presents an approach for developing assembly line simulation models used for optimization of assembly lines. This model is designed in MATLAB 2015(a) with the help of inbuilt Production Toolbox. The simulation of the assembly line is created to assess cycle times and utilization of workstations using MATLAB Simulink. The optimization, in the context of presented work, is the process of locating and scheduling the products in the line achieving best timing to fulfill production orders. The workstations can be first balanced for better performance and then products are scheduled based on reduction of the production time.