Eects of welding operating factor on shipyard panel lines production quantity

Welding processes play a major role in ship production. If the welding process can be performed in less time, ship fabrication can be completed in a shorter time. Therefore, it is a signicant issue for welding time to be ended as soon as possible. For this, the operator factor, which is a component of welding time calculation, could be increased. If this is done, welding time could be decreased. The purpose of this study is to determine the eects of operator factor on the production quantity of a panel line. Here, the panel line of a shipyard situated in Turkey was illustrated as an example. Whole workstations of a panel line were taken into consideration and modeled in a SIMIO simulation environment. By changing the operator factor in a web welding work station on a panel line, dierent welding time values were achieved. These welding time values were then inserted into a simulation model and the model was run for a specied period. Finally, the production quantities of the panel line were obtained as an output. Thus, the eects of a changing operator factor on panel line throughput were determined.