Abstract
In order to overcome the inefficiency of labor division and management confusion in garment manufacturing assembly lines when introducing parallel workstations, an improved ant colony optimization (IACO) algorithm with multi-pheromones is proposed in this paper, which provides a new strategy to improve the match degree of operators and tasks in garment assembly line with parallel workstations. In proposed IACO, the first pheromone is set for ant to improve the efficiency of lines efficiency by balancing the workload allocation among workstations, and the second pheromone determines whether to create parallel workstations by valuing the complexity distribution of tasks. Existing real data of a garment manufacturing factory is used to verify the effective of IACO and the result shows that IACO contributes to a smooth work flow, and simultaneously reduce the efficiency loss of labor divisions (ELLD). Moreover, experiments are conduct to explore the trade-off relation between labor division and line arrangement efficiency when introducing parallel workstations. And based on the relation, strategies to create parallel workstations in the assembly line is provided for garment factories with different staff qualities for different apparel products.
Highlights
An apparel assembly line is a flow-oriented production system with a series of workstations arranged along a transportation system,[1] usually a conveyor belt or hanging system.[2,3] Specific tasks are assigned to each workstation and workpieces visit workstations successively,[4] so that a product can be completed within a given cycle time.[5]
This study introduces an index to evaluate the efficiency loss of labor division (ELLD) for apparel production
The efficiency loss of labor divisions (ELLD) of best solutions by improved ant colony optimization (IACO) are relatively low compared with supervisor’s experience because the substitution effect between the labor division and workload balanced of each workstation in assembly line
Summary
An apparel assembly line is a flow-oriented production system with a series of workstations arranged along a transportation system,[1] usually a conveyor belt or hanging system.[2,3] Specific tasks are assigned to each workstation and workpieces visit workstations successively,[4] so that a product can be completed within a given cycle time.[5]. Efficiency losses of the labor division in an assembly line can be reduced by assigning fewer, more similar tasks to a workstation group with parallel workstations. Based on the SI and ELLD, we set the dual objectives of (a) smoothing the workload of PW-ALBP apparel assembly lines and (b) avoiding efficiency losses of the labor division when introducing parallel workstations.
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