Production process improvement within the telecom industry – A simulation study

Abstract

In order for the Company to take the next step in their production process of radio units, a standardization project has begun with the purpose of creating better collaboration between the manufacturing sites. The Company’s work with standards has paved the way for new concepts within final assembly. Their old and rigid manufacturing setup simply does not meet the requirements. The final assembly line consists of a number of workbenches with manual labor and a test process follows it where the test times are very stochastic, dependent on whether the test fails or passes. If the test is failed, it will be sent to troubleshooting for reparation and then back into the line to run the test process again. This leads to a line with both, fairly predictable flow, the manual labor, in combination with a stochastic flow, the test process. This has caused unutilized test stations, line congestions and line balancing problems. Therefore, a better understanding of this flow is needed in order to reach a consensus on how the test process should operate in order to maximize test station utilization and thereby maximizing throughput.
Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to develop a tool for production improvement analysis and to propose a feasible production setup to increase throughput and flexibility.
Objectives: The objectives of the master thesis are to analyze the production setup and to create feasible future production setup to increase throughput and flexibility. Furthermore, should a simulation tool be developed, which can easily be adapted by the employees at The Company for future production improvement analysis. Scenarios to evaluate and analyze are:
Level of automation
Level of flexibility
Production rules
Buffer levels
Method: During this thesis a Systems approach in combination with an analytical approach was used since the project is of both quantitative and qualitative nature. Data has been gathered through observations, literature studies, interviews and raw-data collection. A process map has been constructed, in order to illustrate the manufacturing process. This has been followed by the construction of a simulation model mimicking the production setup in order to analyze different scenarios and production setups.
Conclusions: The analysis has resulted in several conclusions regarding the optimal production layout. Significant improvements can be seen by introducing a new test fixture that reduces the mounting time for the operator. A two-layer conveyor does not increase the throughput and utilization compared to a one-layer conveyor, if the one-layer conveyor is handled the right way. In order to handle the one-layer conveyor correctly, automatic conveyors can be introduced, which also improves the ergonomic situation for the operators. Flexibility can be achieved by sharing the bottleneck allowing for higher utilization per square meter. It would further allow for a
more flexible production setup, reducing the need for additional manufacturing lines.

• author: Ryde, Marcus and Sundblad, Erik
• supervisor: Peter Berling
• organization: Production Management
• course: MIO920
• year: 2013
• type: M1 - University Diploma
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• keywords: Discrete event simulation, Production, Lean, Telecom, Assembly line
• other publication id: 13/5454
• language: English
• id: 3917315
• date added to LUP: 2013-07-03 14:18:40
• date last changed: 2013-08-13 09:40:48