Paint line color change reduction in automobile assembly through simulation

The painting process is an important part of the entire automobile manufacturing system. Changing color in the painting process is expensive because of the wasted paint and solvent during color change. By intelligently selecting cars toward downstream operations at the places where conveyors converge or diverge, we can reduce the number of such color changes without additional hardware investment. Discrete event simulation is a tool of choice in analyzing these issues in order to develop an effective and efficient selection algorithm to ensure the system throughput. The concepts and methods presented here are also applicable to other discrete event manufacturing processes where setup reduction is pursued.