226 / 2024-04-23 15:45:09

Performance analysis and bottleneck identification of multistage assembly lines with line-side buffers

Multistage assembly line,Line-side buffer,Performance analysis,Bottleneck identification,Markov chain model

As the manufacturing industry strives for efficient and cost-effective assembly lines, their configurations must be efficiently designed. Line-side buffers play a critical role in managing material flow and ensuring smooth operations in assembly line. However, there is still a lack of analytical methods to quantify the impact of line-side buffers on the system production performance, hindering the design of lean assembly lines. Therefore, this paper is devoted to develop analytical methods for performance analysis and bottleneck identification of multistage assembly lines with line-side buffers. In such a system, each assembly machine is equipped with a line-side buffer used to stock parts for product assembly, with a threshold inventory control policy applied to replenish the parts. Firstly, Markov chain models are established for one- or two-stage assembly lines, and closed-form formulas are derived to evaluate the performance measures. Secondly, an efficient aggregation-based approximate method is developed to analyze the performance of multistage assembly lines. In addition, three types of bottlenecks are defined and corresponding indicators are derived based on production data to identify the bottlenecks without need for complicated calculations of the production rate and its sensitivities. Finally, numerical case studies are performed to demonstrate the accuracy of the performance analysis method and the bottleneck identification indicators. This paper provides production managers with a quantitative tool for analyzing and improving multistage assembly line with line-side buffers.