SIMULATION BASED PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT: A CASE STUDY ON AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRIES

In automotive industries, variable customer needs’ increase the competition amongst enterprises. However, manufacturers are struggling to complete the customer demand on time. This paper presents a case study taken region in the automotive industry in Michigan, USA. It aims to reduce the production delay by stabilizing manufacturing processes that improve production throughput. Many tools are used including project charter, process flow diagram, Arena simulation, design of experiment (DOE), and layered process audit sheet. The project charter is used to represent the problem, objectives, scope, and methodology. The investigation of the system and the possible improvements are performed using Arena simulation along with DOE. Shop-floor data were collected and statistically analysed to model the different processes. Besides, the Ishikawa diagram was used to identify the root causes of the problems. Results show significant improvements. The number of finished products increased from 726 to 14161 units. The average WIP number increased from 4.9543 to 6.3615 units. The variation amongst the workstations’ utilization is reduced. The cycle time decreased from 203.96 to 130.20 sec.