Creating agility by simplifying product flow in a multiproduct assembly line

Abstract

Agile manufacturing is an emerging concept in industry that aims at achieving flexibility and responsiveness to the changing market needs. The agility concept has an impact on design of products and control of manufacturing systems. Most research on Design For Assembly (DFA) has focused on single product rather than multiple products. In the design of a multiproduct assembly line, the flow of products is an important factor to be considered. Out of the five types of flow, the backtracking flow is the least desirable because it complicates the flow and the serial flow is the most desirable flow since it eases control of manufacturing and material handling. In this paper, an algorithm is developed to identify and to eliminate the critical pair, which causes backtracking. The algorithm can be used by the designers, in design and redesign of products, in simplifying the production flow and hence in improving the manufacturing performance.