Abstract:
Nowadays, in current global competitive market era, all manufacturing organizations are
endeavoring to integrate innovative process modeling and simulation-based performance methods
to improve production capacity and efficiency. Several system changes are required for existing
manufacturing operations to improve profit and maintain position in global business sectors.
Increase in product demand require the transformation of traditional assembly lines to mixed
model assembly lines in modern production systems. Manufacturing industries face many
problems like long manufacturing lead times, bottlenecks, low-capacity utilizations and low
productivity which impact the overall efficiency. leads to decline in process efficiency of the
manufacturing industries. Various techniques are used to enhance the process efficiency in a mixed
model assembly line e.g., mathematical modeling, heuristic approach, search algorithm approach
and simulation modeling method etc. Among such techniques, simulation modeling is a wellaccepted approach for improving process efficiency. Discrete event simulation (DES) is a
modeling method that reduces bottlenecks in the manufacturing process and ensures peak
performance of the system. This research work uses DES to analyze and recommend viable options
to enhance the production of a high technology parts manufacturing industry. The simulation
model is developed by using ARENA ® Simulation software for a case study. Performance metrics
are assessed for existing and proposed reconfigurable assembly lines with increased productivity
and overall efficiency. The simulation model helps to find the essential performance indicators of
the production assembly lines for the case study. The results are then compared with the goal of
optimizing the workflow in existing assembly lines and increasing the production capacity.
