The researchers' difficulty at transferring the scientific knowledge to practitioners and the existence of a gap among the methods developed in literature and the real life problem are issues recognized by literature and seems that they have not been solved yet. The aim of the present work is to outline a methodology that is successfully applicable to the industrial context, i.e. that is able to both take in account of the difficulty of managing a high number of different components and materials and assure the correct line balancing to gain performance improvement of the assembly lines as well as the maintain of such better performance over time. Among the techniques presented by literature, the "kaizen assembly" is exploited to perform the line balancing and to be transferred to practitioners. As the methodology addresses a typical industrial issue, it is outlined through its application to the case of an Italian plant of a chocolatier and confectionery company, leader in the market of premium quality chocolate. In order to get such a difficult result, firstly, a methodology to reduce the complexity is proposed and applied to the case study, by identifying groups of components distinct based on commonalities in the job elements and cycle times, rather than on part-IDs. Secondly "kaizen assembly" are performed and lean manufacturing techniques are applied in order to enhance the assembly lines performance and reach a set target. This allowed the company to achieve the performance objective and to maintain changes steady over time, confirming the validity of the approach.
- Performance improvement of manual assembly lines in a context characterized by complexity
- Violetta Giada Cannas (Author)Rossella Pozzi (Author)Margherita Pero (Author)Tommaso Rossi (Author)
- Summer School Francesco Turco. Proceedings, Vol.2016, pp.171-175
- 2016
- AIDI; Roma
- 21st Summer School "Francesco Turco" 2016, Industrial Systems Engineering (Naples, 13/09/2016–15/09/2016)
- 2283-8996
- Online
- English
- Tutti i diritti sono riservati ai legittimi detentori del copyright. L'Università Carlo Cattaneo - LIUC pubblica i dati relativi alle pubblicazioni di ricerca realizzate dai propri affiliati. La presenza nell'archivio ARL di testi completi non determina in alcun modo la libera riproduzione degli stessi, ma esclusivamente la possibilità della loro consultazione sul sito di ARL.
- Research fields: Industrial engineering and information engineering
- Conference proceeding
- 991000853849005126
