Lean assessment tool for workstation design of assembly lines

Efficiently designed workstations are essential to provide both flexibility and mass production in an effective way. Unfortunately, it is common to find industrial workstations built without a purposeful design. The design of the workstation, oriented to both users and tasks requirements, allows organisations to increase their production indicators (less time, space and cost) and quality levels. Within the present paper, an assessment tool was developed to address a literature gap regarding the lack of tools to evaluate Workstation Design, particularly in assembly lines. The concept of “Hierarchy of Workstation needs” is introduced for prioritising the requirements to achieve full performance in workstations. The concept is visualised as a pyramid split in four levels to achieve excellence: functionality, effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Seven requirements were identified for Workstation Design, namely: “Health and Safety”, “Work environment, cleanliness and orderliness”, “Waste elimination”, “Inventory and material logistics”, “Flexibility”, “Visual Management” and, lastly, “Quality”. An evaluation model and a tool to assess each requirement was developed based on lean and ergonomic aspects and specific for workstation design, which it is difficult to found in other assessment tools. This model has the form of a checklist that is based on the current best practices in Workstation Design of assembly lines. The assessment tool was validated in an automotive assembly line and based on the results obtained, improvements in the associate working zones, workstation dimensions, storage areas or parts feeding system are introduced to improve “Waste elimination” and “Inventory and material logistics”. Paper presented at: Complex Systems Engineering and Development Proceedings of the 27th CIRP Design Conference Cranfield University, UK 10th – 12th May 2017