Simulating a manufacturing cell-a success story

Simulation is being used increasingly by manufacturing engineers to analyze manufacturing system designs. Because of a new generation of desktop computers and simulation tools, it is becoming the best approach to perform `what if . . .´ studies with different manufacturing design alternatives. Instead of laborious paper and pencil analyses or less-than-perfect mathematical tool, simulations of a system that capture all key dynamics of the manufacturing system can be built and used to answer difficult questions in a relatively small amount of time. This presentation discusses a simulation study of the production of rubber products that was changed to a cellular manufacturing layout at Gates Rubber in Denver, Colorado. Included in this article is a discussion of the simulation model, the results that were obtained, and the decisions that Gates Rubber made as a result of the study. This simulation project was especially challenging because the time period allocated to answer some very complex questions was highly constrained. The entire project, of which simulation was one part, was limited to three man-weeks over a two-month period to convert a complex conventional manufacturing process into a cellular design