Performance Improvement in Service Manufacturing Lines Supported by Information Sharing and Task Assignment Flexibility

Abstract

The combination of automation and workforce must be properly analyzed during design to ensure coupled control coordination. Otherwise, we find challenges that end increasing the losses or the cost. The flexibility of the process is based on the combinations in which the parts of the system can interact and work collaboratively. This seemingly heuristic approach in current sorting lines is the basis for time efficiency. This research presents a systematic analysis of a three lines conveyor for manual sorting with a shared and segregated information system. This system uses a central information display which provides the workers the direction and location guidance for the operation. The layout is based on a real packing and sorting line from commercial transportation. This is an upgrade to the hand scanner system where the worker could advance the allocation information instead of retaining in mind the current mapping to asset the task quickly, thus this causes irregular utilization between workers, being this an uncontrollable variable. The results show how the communication between systems and the access to information in real time improve the performance of the worker and, in turn, the process time is reduced. In addition to the increase of production output, the overall quality performance improves as the learning curve of operator evolves without retention in task repetition.