Balancing of the Production Line Process in the Manufacturing of the Hand Grinder

Abstract

The mechanical and manual operations in the production of a hand grinder present many problems. There is a wide range of issues such as massive inventory of work in progress (WIP), irrational allocation of work procedures, disorderly assembly line layout, and poorly balanced assembly line. The visualization of the working area layout and process charts of the production line is achieved using the Value Stream Map (VSM). This study produces the future value flow diagram to optimize the hand grinder production line. In this survey, industrial engineering (IE) methodologies helped improve the manufacturing sequences and layout and identify all workflow bottlenecks. Also, when IE methods are combined with the genetic algorithm (GA), they made a useful tool to balance successfully and eliminate all sequential manufacturing problems. The improved production line successfully shortens the production lead time (PLT), cuts down the inventory activities, removes unnecessary movements of people, and balances the flow-line production system and layout.