A sortation system model

Abstract

Automotive manufacturing is a complex task involving several steps of machining and assembly. Typically, larger components of an automobile such as the body, engine etc. are assembled over multiple systems. These large assemblies are transferred from one assembly system to another using conveyors.The conveyor/transfer system serves as a buffer and also serves to sort and re-sequence the components in a form that is required by the downstream operation. This requires the transfer system to be able to 'look ahead' at the requirements for the downstream operation and resequence the assemblies, if necessary. The sortation and re-sequencing part of the conveyor system is called a selectivity bank. The capacity requirement calculation and configuration design of these selectivity banks is difficult due to the randomness in the operation of, and the differences in schedules between the two systems it is connecting. Simulation is a valuable tool that is increasingly being used in the design, testing and upgrading of these systems. This paper presents the typical design issues of such selectivity banks, that are addressed using simulation. A case study is presented to elucidate the concepts and applications. The paper concentrates on automotive manufacturing systems but the concepts presented here are applicable to sortation systems used in several industries.

CSP Dinámico: Un algoritmo dinámico para la resecuenciación en un almacén de líneas en paralelo.

“…Sin embargo, pocas son las aportaciones sobre la resecuenciación mediante líneas en paralelo previas a la línea de ensamblaje. En la mayoría de ellas el objetivo es la reordenación, (Ding y Sun, 2004;Fournier y Agard, 2007;Jayaraman et al, 1997;Meissner, 2010) reordenan la secuencia para obtener la secuencia inicial. Pocos autores (Choi y Shin, 1997;Moon et al, 2005b;Valero-Herrero et al, 2011a;Valero-Herrero et al, 2011b) marcan como objetivo en la resecuenciación la minimización en la violación de las restricciones establecidas por la línea de montaje.…”

Dynamic sequencing of jobs on conveyor systems for minimizing changeovers

“…Finally, since physical change in existing conveyor system is very expensive considering equipment downtime and installation cost, the use of simulation model to study the effect of system changes is indispensable even though building a high-fidelity simulation model itself is a large undertaking. However, state-of-the-art simulation software packages provide sophisticated programming constructs and abilities allowing intricate operating details of such complex systems to be modeled with relative ease and accuracy (Jayaraman, Narayanaswamy et al (1997)).…”

Small-World Optimization Algorithm and Its Application in a Sequencing Problem of Painted Body Storage in a Car Company

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