OCTOBER 19-20, 2012 - YMCA University of Science & Technology

Proceedings of the National Conference on
Trends and Advances in Mechanical Engineering,
YMCA University of Science & Technology, Faridabad, Haryana, Oct 19-20, 2012
Cellular layouts are generally more space efficient than other arrangements, and are transferable to other
facilities.The main reason that manufacturing companies are attracted towards implementing cellular
manufacturing is that the benefits of Cellular manufacturing can normally be realized with relatively low capital
investment by relocating and possibly duplicating certain machines as opposed to other automated strategies.
Cellular manufacturing is an approach that helps in building of variety of products with a little waste as possible.
In Cellular manufacturing machinery and small team of staff put together so all the work on a product or part can
be accomplished in the same cell eliminating resources that do not add value to the product.It is based on group
of different processes located in close proximity to manufacturing a group of similar products
[2].NittayaandBusaba [3] in their case study on Electronic Manufacturing Service Plant have identified that
cellular manufacturing systems’also suits for high volume production. Outcome of their case study is found to be
very much useful for the present work.
2. Problems Identified in Existing TAFE cell
Detail study of production processes at TAFE Cell was carried out; some of the important problems identified in
the cell are given below:
• Distance between the machines is 2.1 feet which is to be increased.
• Air cleaning operation is carried out at inside the plant layout which produces a lot of noise.
• Electric equipment’s such as panel board, UPS are placed inside the plant layout; it is required to separate the
electric equipment’s from working area.
• Machines are arranged in shop floor without properly analyzing time required for material movements and
cycle time of machining work; this has resulted in non-value added time and higher WIP inventory.
• Total 90 cutting tools are used to carry out the machining operations for IDB axle housing components this has
resulted in higher tooling cost.
• At OIB Axle Housing line VTM 02 machine taking more cycle time compared to customer takt time this has
resulted company having 75 components of production in place of demand rate of 115 components.
• At IDB Axle Housing line first operation for 3components is performed in 3 Horizontal Machining Center
A81 machines and second operation is performed at 1 machine of Horizontal Machining Center A51 machine.
This is causing over burden on operator working at HMC A51.
• Components are moved in batches without proper scheduling of machining work, this is resulting higher WIP
inventory at each machine.
3. Line Balancing for Machining of Axle Housing and Carrier Component
In order to develop a new layout for Axle Housing and Carrier components it is necessary to balance the
production load based on takt time. All the details of takttime and production line balancing for these components
are discussed in the following sections.
3.1 Takt time for Axle Housing and Carrier Components
Takt time is a common lean concept applicable and beneficial in a number of situations. The idea is to produce
product or carry out the work at the rate at which the customer requires it. If the customer demand averages one
unit per production minute, produce the product at this rate (Takt time). It is the ratio of available work time to the
customer demand rate [4]. In the present work takt time is considered as important factor to determine the layout
requirements. Takt time is useful foranalysing the process loads and excess capacity.
3.2 Takt time calculations for OIB Axle Housing
Available work time per day= 80460 seconds per day
Daily customer demand for OIB Axle Housing components is 115components/day.
Takt time
=699 sec/piece
Similarly the takt time for IDB Axle Housing is 638 sec/piece and for Carrier component it is 640 sec/piece.
3.3 LineBalancingfor OIB Axle Housing
OIB Axle Housing component has two variants such as shorter and longer. To develop one piece flow line it is
required, that process must be able to scale to the customer takt time. Operation data of OIB Axle Housing is given in
Table 1 and the line balancing chart is shown in Figure 1. First operation for shorter component is performed in VTL
machine and for longer component in VTM 01 machine. Time taken for machining in VTL is 1353 sec where as in
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