Analysis of the Effect of the Line-Seru Conversion on the Waiting Time with Batch Arrival

Hui Ren,Dongyu Wang

doi:10.1155/2019/4036794

Abstract

The conveyor assembly line has been widely used in manufacturing industries to produce standard products with low costs. However, due to lack of flexibility, this production method has not been conducive to multivariety and small-batch production. In this situation, seru production formed by converting conveyor assembly lines has been a successful innovation in the Japanese manufacturing industry. Most of the existing literature has studied the benefits of this line-seru conversion from the perspective of the enterprises themselves, but this paper studies the effect of the line-seru conversion on the waiting time from the perspective of the customer. First, the change in the average waiting queue length caused by the line-seru conversion is proposed as an evaluation index. Second, with the consideration of the practical situation of random batch arrivals, the average waiting queue length formulas for the conveyor assembly line and seru production are established based on the assumption that the arrival is a Poisson process. Then, under two scenarios, we investigate the relationship between the average waiting queue length changed by the line-seru conversion and other parameters and find that the conversion can reduce the average waiting queue length in multivariety and small-batch production. Finally, under other potential scenarios, the equations for determining the average waiting queue length resulting from a change to line-seru conversion are derived.

Highlights

With an increasingly diversified customer demand and shortened product life cycle, manufacturing enterprises are gradually facing a multivariety and small-batch production environment
The difference is that we study a multiserver batch arrival queuing system, where the conveyor assembly line consists of multiple workstations in a series and in which the seru production system consists of multiple parallel workstations, as shown in Figures 1(a) and 1(b)
Formula (1) shows that the average waiting queue length changed by the line-seru conversion can be obtained only when the average waiting queue lengths of the conveyor assembly line and the seru production methods are obtained

Summary

Introduction

With an increasingly diversified customer demand and shortened product life cycle, manufacturing enterprises are gradually facing a multivariety and small-batch production environment. Demand fluctuations often lead to over- or underproduction; the fatal weakness of low flexibility is completely exposed [1] To face such a turbulent markets environment, manufacturing factories started to look for new production organization forms with low costs and high flexibility. A rotating seru is often organized in a Ushaped layout with several completely cross-trained workers who can assemble an entire product. In the process of manufacturing and service, it is difficult to obtain the customers’ satisfaction without considering the customers’ perception This paper compares these two production organization forms, conveyor assembly line and seru production, based on the customers’ waiting time.

Literature Review

The Effect of the Line-Seru Conversion on the Average Waiting Queue Length

Numerical Analysis of Conversion Scenarios

Findings

Conclusions