Work improvement at an engine assembly line at car manufacturing plant

Abstract

The project was carried out at ETM engine assembly line at a car assembly plant. The objectives of this project are to reduce cycle time in ETM assembly at EA21 workstation and suggest improvement technique to overcome the problem. The company produces many types of engines and the process of producing one engine has been chosen for this project. The study only focus on the internal part of engine assembly line. By assuming all work is normally distributed, time study is done using continuous stop watch method in order to determine the standard time of all the processes involved. Data collection was done through observations, interviews, and study of company records and discussion with supervisors and engineer. Pareto Chart is constructed to determine problem which lead to the high waste operation time. Poor Line balancing is the main problem with 330 hours or 67.1% time lost. Simulation using WITNESS software and line balancing analysis has been chosen to overcome the problem. Through these techniques, 4 alternative models have been developed. Alternative 3 proposed using color coding for parts storage rack has been selected as the best alternative. The scoring was done by taking three performance measurements into account which is cycle time, line balancing loss, and cost