Analysis and Optimization of Bottlenecks via Simulation

Abstract

Manufacturing enterprises in China always have a price advantage of raw material and labor force. Optimization methods are currently widely used in manufacturing system to improve the performance of their production lines and workshops. To maximum the optimization effects, simulation is increasingly applied to the optimization of manufacturing industry. Flexsim can be a useful tool to cope with this optimization made up of several highly discrete events. This article is based on the manufacturing system of company JKL’s cooler. First, this paper introduces and analyzes the company’s manufacturing condition including process flow and its problems in production. Second, the model will be simulated in order to find the weakness and constraints of this system. Third, we introduce a method to identify bottlenecks and offer a framework to solve bottleneck problems. Then, a model based on the statistics and processes is built. In the final section, the results are evaluated and analyzed.The simulation results show that quantity of the products and efficiency of the machines are evidently improved after optimization, which proves that the optimization is effective.