A COMPLETE DESIGN METHODOLOGY FOR LEAN IN-PLANT LOGISTICS TO ASSEMBLY LINE USING AD PRINCIPLES

Implementation of lean philosophy has gained importance since it has achieved an outstanding success especially in production systems. Principles of lean production are different from traditional systems, where parts feeding and material handling activities are performed differently especially in small lot production. Integration and coordination of these activities increase the efficiency of lean systems. In this paper, a complete design for in-plant logistics activities is performed via Axiomatic Design (AD) principles. A four-step design methodology from parts line side presentation through in-plant vehicle routing is proposed. Comprehensive literature for each design step is given, and a continuous improvement scheme for the proposed design is developed. The relations between lean principles, design parameters and lean tools are evaluated and the justification of the proposed design is shown. The findings of the study also point out voids in the literature and shed light on future studies.

A Multi-objective scheduling of hybrid manufacturing systems with walking workers

Hybrid manufacturing systems (HMSs) are the combination of cells and the functional area. It is more suitable in terms of real-world applications to include workers in the product scheduling problem in these systems by the nature of the cells. The multi-objective product scheduling problem in HMS is addressed together with the worker objectives in this study. Three different objectives are identified for the problem: One of them is the minimization of average flow time, and the other two are the minimization of maximum number of workers and the minimization of maximum number of workers changing. Including the number of workers in the objectives presents a realistic approach as well as bringing problem's novelty out. A new detailed mathematical model which reflects real-world applications is developed for the multi-objective product scheduling problem. NSGA-II which is a metaheuristic algorithm and a local search also developed for the study are combined and utilized together. The algorithm proposed through six different hypothetical cases and the original NSGA-II algorithm are compared, and the efficiency of the proposed algorithm is mentioned in the conclusion

Determination of Material Handling Equipment for Lean In-Plant Logistics Using Fuzzy Analytical Network Process Considering Risk Attitudes of the Experts

Using right material handling equipment (MHE) is substantial in terms of manufacturing costs even if related manufacturing environment is lean. In this paper, right materials handling equipment selection problem is investigated at the line feeding systems such as kitting and milk-run systems. Each system has three alternatives for selection and main problem is the difficulty in selecting the appropriate one, since these equipments are integrated with each other by means of a total of nine possible combinations. In order to select most appropriate combination, alternative equipment is evaluated separately at first and then, resulting priorities are aggregated to find the best alternative. In the equipment selection decision model, there are four main criteria and seventeen sub-criteria. Since the dependencies are appeared within the criteria, Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP) technique is preferred. Besides that, risk attitude of the experts are also incorporated into the model using linguistic terms in order to reach accurate results. The real world application is implemented in an electronic device assembly plant located in Istanbul. The result of the numerical application demonstrated that Tugger Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) should be used for the milk-run system and a Belt conveyor should be acquired for the kitting system