Single Routing versus Multi Routing Line Balancing
D
Dave Sly
started a topic
over 1 year ago
Ideally, you have a Single Configured Routing of Activities to import into the Line Balancing module along with a build list of units (or model/option take-rates) which determine Activity occurrence.
I say, ideally, because a configured routing contains all of the Activities that the assembly line could experience and the model/option properties reduce Activity duplication while also ensuring that those Activities shared across product variants occur in a minimal number of Operator/Station assignments (ideally only one).
For example, if I have 10 models and an common Activity is used for 6 of them, then in a configured routing line balance, I have only 1 Activity to assign vs 10 . The precedence rules apply to and from that one Activity instead of between 10 mutually exclusive parallel Activities.
Alternately, if I had imported 10 model-specific routings, I would need to define 10 unique precedence networks, and plan the location for 6 identical Activities. If each of those routings had 100 Activities, and if 60% were common, then I would have (1,000 Activities to assign in a model-specific routing situation, vs 60+(40*10) =460 worst case Activities. I say "worst case" because even those 40% Activities not common to all models are likely common to other models, so the real number is probably just over 200 Activities (vs 1,000). In short, creating a line balance from a configured routing is 5 to 10 times easier on average than importing and managing 10 unique model-specific routings.
When importing multiple model-specific routings, engineers will often define a Group to link those 6 different Activities together so that one one is assigned, the other 5 follow. This approach will work, but it is additional effort which will slow down the line balancing calculations and make the Precedence network and Yamazumi charts unnecessarily complex.
Dave Sly
Ideally, you have a Single Configured Routing of Activities to import into the Line Balancing module along with a build list of units (or model/option take-rates) which determine Activity occurrence.
I say, ideally, because a configured routing contains all of the Activities that the assembly line could experience and the model/option properties reduce Activity duplication while also ensuring that those Activities shared across product variants occur in a minimal number of Operator/Station assignments (ideally only one).
For example, if I have 10 models and an common Activity is used for 6 of them, then in a configured routing line balance, I have only 1 Activity to assign vs 10 . The precedence rules apply to and from that one Activity instead of between 10 mutually exclusive parallel Activities.
Alternately, if I had imported 10 model-specific routings, I would need to define 10 unique precedence networks, and plan the location for 6 identical Activities. If each of those routings had 100 Activities, and if 60% were common, then I would have (1,000 Activities to assign in a model-specific routing situation, vs 60+(40*10) =460 worst case Activities. I say "worst case" because even those 40% Activities not common to all models are likely common to other models, so the real number is probably just over 200 Activities (vs 1,000). In short, creating a line balance from a configured routing is 5 to 10 times easier on average than importing and managing 10 unique model-specific routings.
When importing multiple model-specific routings, engineers will often define a Group to link those 6 different Activities together so that one one is assigned, the other 5 follow. This approach will work, but it is additional effort which will slow down the line balancing calculations and make the Precedence network and Yamazumi charts unnecessarily complex.