Comparative Study on the Influence of U-Shaped Self-Organizing Production Line Configuration on Capacity

Abstract

There are three typical representatives of U-shaped selforganizing production line, namely U-shaped Travelling, ChasingOvertaking, Cellular Bucket Brigade. The equipment, placed according to the process sequence, and the distance between the equipment form a Ushaped production line configuration. The former forms the process imbalance variable, and the latter forms the aisle width variable. For this, a simulation experiment with process imbalance and aisle width as independent variables and production line capacity as dependent variable was designed. The Plant-Simulation® simulation platform was used to obtain experimental data and verify it. The results show that ChasingOvertaking capacity is the highest under the same conditions. The production capacity of Cellular Bucket Brigade line and U-shaped traveling line is lower than that of CO line by more than 20%; and under the discrete system, the three self-organized production lines are not affected by configuration factors.