Design of Flow Lines
In a Flow production system (flow line) the workstations are arranged in a physically contiguous sequence according to the production process. The workpieces flow from one processing workstation onto the next. This type of production layout is used when a product or a family of technologically similar products exhibit high and stable demand.
Depending on the specific planning situation different types of planning problems arise. In the literature, basically two groups of problem areas are discussed:
- Assembly Line balancing
- Buffer Allocation
Assembly line balancing groups processing tasks and simultaneously assigns these task groups to workstations, whereby usually deterministic data are assumed
Performance Evaluation and buffer sizing considers the effects that are caused by the randomness of task times and the occurrence of machine breakdowns.
| POM Flowline Optimizer - A software system for the design of flow lines with limited buffers. More information here. |