A very important transition for all companies, especially in the automotive industry, is the move from mass production to lean manufacture. By reducing the changeover time, parts could be made in smaller batches. In case of using presses, for example, die changeover times were cut from a whole day to minutes across a wide range of vehicles, thus the number of variants produced by a single press could be increased. But lean manufacturing includes also a storage of fewer parts, an early identification of errors or enhancing skills of workers. Discrete Event simulation (DES) is a modelling technique that is used worldwide by companies trying to fulfill these requirements, improve competitiveness and reduce costs. Although the idea of using Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is not new, it is frequently under-utilised due to the complexity of modelling real plants and the associated training and development costs. This paper describes the key factors facing the European automotive industry and proceeds to outline how DES can help tackle production related concerns. The novelty of the approach lies in the closer integration of DES with existing sources of enterprise information and the feedback results via a new Digital Enterprise Technology framework (DET). The benefits of DES for key factors of capacity and cost of manufacture are described in the context of a high volume press shop. As a method within the framework of DET and in context of the press shop model, it is vital for providing feedback throughout the system, but especially to the development of process models and plans and for providing a visual medium for product and process validation.
Using discrete event simulation to increase competitiveness within a high volume press shop
2003
6 Seiten, 1 Bild, 7 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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