Design & evaluation of engine assembly line layouts

IPCO is power train supplier for IranKhodro which is the largest car manufacturing company in the Middle East. Recently has done a lot of effort to optimize energy consumption, decrease environment pollution and use alternative fuel in the world. Thus IPCO started research, design and production gas fuel engine instead of petrol one for automobiles in C and D class. Following market research the annual target rate settled 200,000 engines. To design the layout in limited area (3800 m²) & also analyze specification of the production & material handling equipment, considering all of the constraint, resources and facilities, simulation model get developed in Enterprise Dynamics. The length of conveyors, cycle time of equipments, optimized number of required pallets & etc. get specified for 2 types of F shape & L shape of layout. Initial inspection shows that the optimum annual production rate will be 185000 units which is less than target.