EVALUATION OF THE ROLE OF WASTE IN A TRUCK MANUFACTURING LINE USING SIMULATION

In their never-ending search to improve manufacturing performance. com panies try to eliminate all sources of waste. In this paper, we descri be how the effects of the elimination of waste on performance measures such as lead time and overtime costs can be estimated using logistica l simulation This is illustrated using a real-life case study that was conducted in the repair department of a truck cabin factory. In this department, cabs are controlled and if necessary repaired. The first p art of the paper describes how bottlenecks were determined for both th e present layout and for a proposed layout change. This turned out to be difficult, as several product flows `intertwine'. Modelling was mad e complex by these interactions, as they caused deadlock phenomena. Th e second part of the paper represents a sensitivity analysis, which ev aluates the effects of different types of waste, such as machine break downs, inadequate buffer size and production time variance.