Flexible flow shop manufacturing system improvement by simulation approach: A case study of handbangs manufacturer in HCMC

Abstract

A case study of handbags manufacturer in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam addresses a problem in which scheduling for mass production with stochastic processing time is still relying on manager’s experience; balance of resources and equipment on the production line can be improved and optimized, thus showing a directly significant effect on the throughput of the production line. This study focuses on constructing a simulation model of the manufacturing system in order to thoroughly evaluate the issue. Due to the significantly large workload for input modeling one by one processing time data, an R code is developed to automatically finding distribution and perform goodness of fit test. Based on simulation output of the validated system, line balancing and process scheduling solutions are proposed and simulated through the model. The results show a feasible improvement in terms of number of products finished and balance between production lines. Keywords: flexible flow shop, simulation, manufacturing improvement, line balancing