Abstract
The automotive industry is undergoing a transformational period where more and more new energy vehicles (NEVs) are being produced and delivered to the market. Accordingly, some new challenges arise during the manufacturing process for car companies. Since the mixed-model assembly line has been widely used, how to integrate the NEVs into the existing assembly system that was designed for the production of gasoline cars is a key issue. A practical approach assigning a specific workforce to handle NEV assembly work is applied at the BMW assembly shop. This work studies this new production pattern and focuses on the design of the assembly system under this pattern. This work aims to develop a method for minimizing the production cost of NEV assembly. Thus, an exact algorithm for hierarchically solving the assembly line balancing problem and vehicle model sequencing problem is proposed. Mixed integer programming mathematical models that describe these two problems are formulated for the first time. Three new benchmark problems and one industry case that include the NEV models are created to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results of numerical tests demonstrate that the developed algorithm can quickly generate reconfiguration solutions of the assembly line for various model mix scenarios and production rates. High flexibility of the manufacturing system can be obtained using the proposed approach.
Highlights
Sales of New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) have been continuously increasing around the global automotive market in the recent decade
Since the assembly line is a paced system where all workstations and workers operate under a fixed cycle time, integration of the production of NEVs will cause fluctuations to the existing assembly system
A practical approach adopted at the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) involves arranging a group of people responsible for the assembly of NEVs
Summary
Sales of New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) have been continuously increasing around the global automotive market in the recent decade. NEVs, such as the battery electric vehicle (BEV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), have been mass-produced by many automotive companies. At the assembly production phase, most automotive manufactures produce multi-models in one assembly line to minimize the production cost. Integrating the NEVs into the existing assembly line is a cost-efficient way to realize. The NEV has a lot of unique parts due to the architectural differences between NEVs and conventional gasoline cars. These differences require additional equipment, tools, operations and workers on the assembly line. Since the assembly line is a paced system where all workstations and workers operate under a fixed cycle time, integration of the production of NEVs will cause fluctuations to the existing assembly system. These people, who are the supplementary labor force, are only involved in the installation of NEV-specific parts
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