Production capabilities using takt times, requirements analysis and simulation

This paper is motivated by a firm that manufactures two main types of products. In an effort to increase their throughput, the company created a production scheme using takt times. To achieve a smooth flow of production, they desired low work-in-process inventory in order to make all components move simultaneously. However, the process includes parallel assembly lines that converge to or diverge from common resources. A simple takt time calculation cannot provide enough information to achieve the desired throughput. The authors identify solutions that improve throughput. One solution, based on takt times or each station's processing times (PTs) for a zero waste schedule, can be used in many other scheduling problems. With the aid of Little's Law and simulation, the authors also show how the system flow can be influenced via managerial settings. Across all production configurations, a 10-15% increase in throughput over the original design can be achieved.