DEVELOPING PROPOSED LAYOUT FOR INCREASING LINE EFFICIENCY ON BODYSHOP

Abstract

Recently, an imbalance workstation in the assembly line is one of the critical problem that many companies face. Many researches have done to solve this problem with the various designs of assembly line balancing. This thesis presents the comparison between straight line balancing and u-shaped line balancing. The heuristic approaches is method to solve both straight line balancing and u-shaped line balancing. Straight line balancing is using Rank Positional Weight (RPW) whereas u-shaped line balancing is using Critical Task Method (CTM). Both straight line balancing and u-shaped line balancing have the same goal; minimizing the workstations. The result of this thesis shows that u-shaped line balancing gives a better solution than the straight line balancing in term of number of workstation. It is because the u-shaped layout is considered to be one of the most flexible techniques for changing the number of workers in the cell to match cell cycle time to planned cycle time. Significantly, u-shaped line balancing is more efficient than straight line balancing.