Application of ranked positional weights method in springbed production line balancing

Abstract

In the current era of globalization, business competition demands industries in manufacturing to improve their business strategies are increasingly. The company that produces spring beds of various sizes has experienced rapid development. Spring bed 180 cm x 200 cm size has the longest process and research on the springbed production line is 180 cm x 200 cm. The company has 9 work stations with 19 work elements with time variation of work elements which are 50 seconds to 2737 seconds. The problem experienced by the company is the bottleneck at the assembly station because it has the longest cycle time of 2737 seconds. One method used in assembly line balancing is the RPW method (Ranked Positional Weights). The RPW method is an approach to solving problems in line balance and finding solutions quickly by the number of workstations determination at a minimum by giving weight to each work elements that has been placed on all work elements. Using the RPW method, obtained line efficiency, balance delay and smoothing index were 86.09%, 13.91% and 1418.45 with the number of work stations is 8.