Author : Shriram Sane, Varsha Karandikar, Rahul Pulkurte and Subodh Patil

An assembly line balancing is to know how tasks are to be assigned to workstations, so that the predetermined goal is achieved. Minimization of the number of workstations and maximization of the production rate are the most common goals. The silencer assembly line is studied in this paper which assembles four products. For line improvement purpose, various Lean Manufacturing tools are employed such as cycle time study, line imbalance calculation, bottleneck identification, Kaizen, space utilization through layout change. Many industries are facing lot of problems like inability to meet production targets, imbalance of work content at work stations, discontinuity in material flow, manpower allotment. In this paper, the design to evaluate the performance, bottleneck identification , reduction in bottleneck cycle time, minimizing line imbalance, workstations organization, reduction in manpower and space saving, increasing manpower utilization of industrial production assembly line are discussed.

Keywords: Assembly Line Balancing, Cycle Time Reduction, resource utilization

Article published in International Journal of Current  Engineering  and Technology, Vol.4,No.3 (June- 2014)