| Author | Tawee Ratanawilaiwan |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no. IE-82-06 |
| Subject(s) | Assembly-line balancing
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| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering School of Engineering and Technology |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | In order to enhance the development of local industries, many governments of developing countries are embarking on a program geared at preserving the local content of assembled products. This local content requirement means that production managers must be continuingly wary of its impact on the assembly lines. This study considers the case of an assembly plant production small diesel engines. It is situated in an environment where the local content percentage of the assembled products is increasing yearly, and thus affecting its assembly lines. The study is specifically aimed at determining which locally made parts are to be selected for increasing the local content percentage, and this selection has to be feasible in the light of government regulations. The selection is based on which parts would require the least changes on the lines.
First, a collection of all relevant data about pars & percentage and an investigation of existing assembly lines were made. All relevant data about the existing assembly lines were collected directly along the assembly lines. In planning which parts will be selected as locally made parts, the data about work elements concerned with increasing local content and corresponding work element times were collected under special conditions. The precedence diagrams of the existing lines were developed according to an ordering in which work elements must be performed to achieve the total assembly of the product. Then all of the work elements concerned depending on parts selection were put in the precedence diagrams. Finally, the line balancing solutions were obtained by applying the COMSOAL technique. The results of the study about the solution for the existing assembly lines show that: for a cycle time of 100 seconds, using the proposed assembly lines, the number of station could be reduced from 33 stations to 26 stations for the main assembly line, from 12 stations to 9 stations for the Painting Line, and from 16 stations to 12 stations for the Final Assembly Line with approximately 23 percent reduction in unit labor cost for each line. For the advance period, the alternative for parts selection to be locally made parts which yield the best result and required minimum number of stations is selected. A set of production rate curves for each line relating to line efficiency and also indicating the number of stations required was constructed in order to help management choose a suitable number of work stations required for a specified production rate.
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| Year | 1982 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology |
| Department | Department of Industrial Systems Engineering (DISE) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Industrial Engineering (IE) |
| Chairperson(s) | Tabucanon, Mario T.
|
| Examination Committee(s) | Oudheusden, Dirk L. Van ; Tang, John C.S.
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| Scholarship Donor(s) | Government of Australia |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1982 |