Identifying Bottlenecks through Process Consistency in High-Capacity Automated Manufacturing
Name
lux-kylelux-mba-mgt-2023-thesis.pdf
Description
Thesis PDF
Size
7.09 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
727a34a6c61b36ad750ca0d214b627b6
Author(s)
Lux, Kyle J.
Advisor(s)
Willems, Sean
Hardt, David
Date Issued
June 2023
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis explores the identification of bottlenecks in automated assembly lines through process consistency. In general, large automated assembly lines have processes grouped together that have a huge affect on one another. They can only operate as fast
as the slowest process (the bottleneck) in their group. These groups are established by placing buffers in between several processes to decouple the slowest processes in groups from one another and to attempt to level production in the manufacturing plant. By comparing processes in the same group to one another, even though every one of them will operate at approximately the same speed, the process that operates the most consistently at this speed is often the bottleneck process.
Consistency to identify bottlenecks was applied at Nissan’s Canton manufacturing plant in Canton, MS during the development of this thesis. Using the techniques described in this thesis, the bottleneck identification process was transformed from a multi-day process into a five minute procedure.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Sloan School of Management
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