INCREASING EFFICIENCY OF ASSEMBLY LINES THROUGH COMPUTER INTEGRATION,DYNAMIC BALANCING AND WAGE INCENTIVE

The traditional approach to mass production is to implement a product- oriented production process. The work to be performed is divided among workstations along a paced line in such a way that the operator in ea ch station repeats the same set of work elements or tasks on each unit of the product. A modified version of the paced assembly line is emer ging: The line is paced, but the time that a unit spends at the workst ations varies. The line movement is controlled by computer, which is p rogrammed to move the line only after all the stations have finished t he work elements assigned to them. The conceptual outline of this appr oach is presented and discussed in this paper.