Consideration of skills in assembly lines and seru production systems

Abstract

Seru production system is the modern version of manufacturing strategy evolved from Toyota Production System (TPS), just-in-time (JIT) and lean. It has been found in recent research works that for a product that has high skill variation and short life cycle, it is useful to use seru manufacturing system. Since this approach is relatively new, there are fewer guidelines regarding when to use seru in contrast with classical assembly line. In this study, worker skill levels have been considered to gain insight about selection of manufacturing strategy between classical assembly line and seru. In this study, seven skill levels from 1 to 7 for workers have been considered and it is assumed that the skill levels are normally distributed. Based on the output and high standard deviation value for skill levels it is found that when the standard deviation of worker skills are high then it is better to use classical assembly line. On the other hand, if workers are highly skilled at all tasks it is better to use seru.