Bottleneck Reduction at The Shoes Production Line using Theory of Constraints Approach

Abstract

This paper deals with an imbalance problem in a shoes company that produces the upper and bottom soles at two production lines, and then they are assembled at the assembly line. The imbalance is caused by bottlenecks at the one site of the production lines. It occur waste of waiting at the next process, i.e. the assembly line. It impacts the production target cannot be met, while throughput cannot be maximized. In this paper, the bottlenecks are managed by Theory of Constraints (TOC) approach that adopt linear programming to optimize the production planning, and adopt the Drum Buffer Rope (DBR) to control the flow of production. The buffers are determined by considering the output gap between the two production lines. This paper also proposes 3 solution alternatives to meet the production target. The main goal of this research is the implementation of Theory of Constraints concepts to reduce imbalance problem at the bottleneck work stations. The result shows that application of DBR as well as the three alternatives of proposed overtime based on the optimal production rate can reduce the problem of imbalance between upper and outsole at the shoe production lines from 18.96% to 4.28%.