Research on the Simulation of Automobile Welding Production Line Based on eM-Plant

Abstract

This paper simulates the assembly and processing of automotive body based on eM-Plant platform, considering the characteristics of the layout of integrated automobile processing station and the machining time arrangement of workers. It analyzes the bottleneck problem of the producing process and finds out the ways to enhance efficiency of automobile welding production line. Introduction At present, China's automobile welding company generally exist many problem such as Chaotic production layout, unreasonable process schedule, and other aspects. Auto production workshop generally adopt the mode of assembly line work, usually a single work station has carried on the detailed division of labor, so that we can enhance the proficiency of the workers, improve the work efficiency of single work station. But for the whole production line, all of the work station in real time can't completely in synchronism, thus cause the high load station work time is too long, while the low load station work time is too short, leading to the working efficiency of the whole production line is not balanced, low productivity of the enterprise. In this paper,we use eM-Plant to model a automobile welding company’s production line.According to the simulation data,we analyzes the bottleneck problem of the producing process and finds out the ways to enhance efficiency of automobile welding production line.It illustrates the application of simulation technology in car welding production line is feasible. The introduction of EM-Plant EM-Plant is a discrete-event simulation tool that helps you to create digital models of logistic systems (such as production), so that you can explore a system’s characteristics and optimize its performance. These digital models allow you to run experiments and what-if scenarios without disturbing existing production systems or – when used in the planning process – long before the real production systems are installed. Extensive analysis tools, such as bottleneck analysis, statistics and charts let you evaluate different manufacturing scenarios. The results provide you with the information needed to make fast, reliable, smarter decisions in the early stages of production planning. Using EM-Plant, you can model and simulate production systems and their processes. In addition, you can optimize material flow, resource utilization and logistics for all levels of plant planning from global production facilities, through local plants, to specific lines. The analysis of examples Automobile welding production line is composed of many working procedures,each working procedure is composed of different working station,each working station needs different number of works and the working time of each station is different too.Table 1 is a processing station list of a International Conference on Intelligent Systems Research and Mechatronics Engineering (ISRME 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 1032 automobile welding production line ,which records each working station processing time and the number of workers required. Table 1 processing time and the number of workers required of each working station Station Number Process Name Process Time The number of workers P1 Assemble the front cover hinge 45 4 P2 Assemble the Back cover hinge and the front door 55 4 P3 Install the fender bracket and the back door 55 6 P4 Adjust the doors 60 4 P5 Pre-installed the fender 85 4 P6 Install the fender 54 4 P7 Adjust the fender 48 2 P8 Weld the girder end plate 85 4 The modeling and simulation Use the combination of a Buffer and a SingleProc to represent a working station then the working station P1 can be represent as figure 1.Use workplace and work pool to represent the number of workers a working station required.Figure 2 shows that working station P2 needs four workers. Fig. 1 working station P1 Fig. 2 the workers of working station P2 We set the simulation time 8 hours and run the simulation ,we can get the total number of the automobile produced is 328.Utilization of each working station is showed in table 2. From the table 2 we can see the bottleneck is working station P5 and working station P8 of which the utilization is very high.Because of the high load of these two working station,lead to the high blocked rate of P1,P2,P3,P4 and high waiting rate of P7,P8.So,if we want to enhance the production,we must solve the bottleneck problem.Now,we add 2 workers to working station P5 and working station P8 respectively to reduce the load of these two station.After improvement ,we can find the total production enhance to 465,and the utilization of each working station is showed in table 3.