Comparative Study on the Influence of U-Shaped Self-Organizing Production Line Configuration on Capacity

Abstract

There are three typical representatives of U-shaped selforganizing production line, namely U-shaped Travelling, Chasing- Overtaking, Cellular Bucket Brigade. The equipment, placed according to the process sequence, and the distance between the equipment form a Ushaped production line configuration. The former forms the process imbalance variable, and the latter forms the aisle width variable. For this, a simulation experiment with process imbalance and aisle width as independent variables and production line capacity as dependent variable was designed. The Plant-Simulation® simulation platform was used to obtain experimental data and verify it. The results show that Chasing- Overtaking capacity is the highest under the same conditions. The production capacity of Cellular Bucket Brigade line and U-shaped traveling line is lower than that of CO line by more than 20%; and under the discrete system, the three self-organized production lines are not affected by configuration factors.