Information needed for Line Balance
- Operation sequence
- Type of machines required per operation
- List of attachments required
- A Standard time for each operation
- Number of operators on the line(Balancing Type 1)
- Number of pieces required (Balancing Type 2)
Using “Methods” software one can easily make an Operation Sequence which lists the Equipment Required (Machine and Attachments) and the Standard time
For those of you who have done this job you will have noticed that sometimes a difference of one or two operators can change the output potential of the line, so we have inserted the following screen to help you to achieve the maximum productivity from the start. The above conditions are now applied to the operation sequence. Different machine types are displayed in different colours for ease of combination the bottleneck operations are shown in RED Operations in Gold indicate operations that require an integer number of people, therefore they do not need combining with other operations.
The balancing procedure is to choose the operations that can be balanced (those that use the same machine). As an example we have selected operations 2, 3 and 5 to combine since they use the same machine type, they are close to each other and will load the requirement of one operator.
Once this has been done press the combine button and the screen will show the combined operations and the line will change to GOLD
The process is continued until all of the operations have been combined, during this process an effort should be made to improve the output of the Bottleneck operation since this will improve the balance efficiency which will lead to higher efficiency and increased productivity.
