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A Seminar presentation on

Research of dynamic material handling in an
automobile general assembly line based on
real time information
By: Devadas shenoy KP
(4CB09ME014)
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Why research on material handling is necessary in
manufacturing industry.
Modern high-technology manufacturing systems, such as those
in the aerospace and automotive industries, can be more complex
than ever before.

It is claimed that nearly 20%-50% of the manufacturing costs may
be related to material handling.

Therefore, efficient and precise analysis of system performance
in a general assembly line with material handling is necessary and
important.

The assembly process synchronizes with the material delivery, so
the necessary material delivered timely and accurate is the
insurance of high productivity and quality.



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A general assembly line with a material handling
system
Fig 1 : Architecture of material handling system
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Problems faced in material
handling in an Automobile General
assembly line
Lack of real-time production information

Lower agility and frequency

Uncertain responsibility of drives


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Introducing Radio frequency Identification device (RFID) in the general
assembly line

Real time production information tracking.

Consumption of line-side buffer is obtained dynamically.

The type and quantity of needed material are fed back to the
subsystem of material handling.

Improves the efficiency of delivery drivers.

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What is RFID ?
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the wireless non-
contact use of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to
transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identifying
and tracking tags attached to objects.

The tag contains electronically stored information which
may be read from up to several meters away.

Unlike a bar code, the tag does not need to be within line
of sight of the reader and may be embedded in the tracked
object.

RFID tags are used in many industries. An RFID tag
attached to an automobile during production can be used to
track its progress through the assembly line

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Fig 2. Size of a RFID tag compared
with rice grain
Fig 3. Working of RFID

Source : wikipedia.

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The architecture of the dynamic material handling system
Fig 4 : Working of RFID in automobile general assembly line
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Before introducing the specific steps of dynamic material
handling system (MHS) based on RFID technology, the situation
of the assembly plant studied should be stated as follows.

The car body on assembly line continuously moving at a constant
speed.

There is only one stocking area in the assembly plant.

Determinate number of delivery driver, limited capacity of dolly train
to carry parts.

There is a predetermined set of parts for each drivers responsibility.

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Demonstration of the specific steps of
dynamic MHS based on RFID
technology.

Fig 5. The flow chart of material handling in the automobile assembly line.
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Determine the N_Threshold and the time windows of reorder parts
The dynamic MHS automatically calculates the collected part
consumption information and adds a new reorder part to the reorder
part list when its inventory level
reaches the pre-set quantity which is called N-threshold.

The parts which the general assembly line needed should be
delivered to stations based on the reorder point.

Reorder point is a pre determined criteria when a specific part
reaches a certain level at its line-side buffer.

Generally, 15 minutes reorder point for part i at station j can
sustain 15 minutes of production.

When the line-side inventory of parts is less than the pre-set
quantity a part reorder request is sent to the material handling
system automatically.

Meanwhile, a given number of drivers are waiting for the part
reorder in the central docking area .
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The specific remaining quantity of part i, which is called N
threshold, can be calculated as:

N threshold (i) = Reorder points/ Takt_time x Avg(i)eq (1)

Where i denotes the part index.

Takt_time denotes the takt_time of the assembly line.

Avg(i) denotes the average consumption of part i, which can
be obtained from historical production data.

Contd..
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Identifying the departure time of deliver trips for a driver
As the automobile line is used in a Just in time (JIT) pattern, for a
specific station, if the required materials arrive at the line-side buffer
before its expected time, there may not be enough space for
accommodating these parts and causes the cost of a vehicle waiting.

On the other hand, in order to avoid the case that the assembly
line stops resulting from part starvation, it is required that the
reorder part must be replenished before a certain time.

These problems strictly constrain the time of delivering the reorder
parts.

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We define some notations:
RT
i
: the time when reorder part is added to the part delivery list.

BT
i
: the best time that the inventory level of the line-side buffer just
reaches the safety stock when the reorder parts are replenished.

LT
i
: the latest time the reorder part arrives at the station, when the
inventory of a line-side buffer becomes exhausted.

C
i
: The consumption rate of part i.

IL
i
: the inventory level of part i .

OR
i
: the amount of part i which is on road to the station.

Then,
LT
i
= RT
i
+ (IL
i
+ OR
i
)/ C
ieq (2)

BT
i
= + (IL
i
+ OR
i
- SS
i
)/ C
i.eq (3)

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Determining time windows of reorder parts.
Once the part is added to the part delivery list, the
time window can be obtained which is [RT i, LT i]

we introduce the timeliness penalty function for
measuring the degree of timeliness of a delivery
activity.

As shown in Figure 4, we penalize the deviation of
the part replenish time from the BT i , the timeliness
penalty gets the value of zero at the best time and
positive values at other points.

The slope of the penalty function is , , and the
big M for the replenish time belonging to the
interval [RT i, BT i] , [BT i, LT i] and [LT i, ],
respectively.

The proper values of = - 0.5 and =2.5 are
obtained from computational experiences.

Fig 6 : Time window of the part reorder station
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Numerical results
Based on the above analysis, considering there are 238 parts and 6
drivers involved in the delivery activity, before parts being delivered
to assembly stations,

Each driver is arranged in charge of a set of parts which he should
replenish. Based of the 32 shifts of dynamic material handling
planning for the automobile assembly plant,

The comparison results of the proposed improved material handling
method (IMHM) and traditional material handling method (TMHM) are
shown in Table 1.

Compared with the traditional material handling method, the
frequency of drivers delivery trip of the IMHM decreases remarkably

The results shows that the IMHM is more practical than TMHM and
can supply the necessary material for the automobile assembly plant
in time, and remarkably improve the efficiency of the driver.

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Driver TMHM
(times)
IMHM
(times)
Reduce
(times)
TMHM
Busy time
(min)
IMHM
Busy time
(min)
Save
(min)
1 3574 2905 669 15793.96 15056.11 737.85
2 3581 3480 101 17335.06 17230.69 104.37
3 3081 1614 1467 8772.89 5554.07 3218.82
4 3439 2329 1110 14152.86 12676.47 1476.39
5 2396 1918 478 13229.32 12774.36 454.96
6 3323 3274 49 19013.48 18950.19 63.29
The comparison table results.
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Conclusions

It is based on RFID technology to achieve the real-time
tracking of assembly status information.

Different from the traditional material handling method
which is periodic and under the delivery strategy of one dolly
one trip,

The dynamic material handling system automatically obtains
the consumption of a line-side buffer.

According to assembly information and time windows of the
needed material, it determines the best time of delivery driver
to start the trip based on total time penalty function.

Numerical testing results of a practical automobile assembly
line show that the new method is efficient and effective,

The material amount of a single delivery trip is maximized

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REFERENCES

[1] Li J, Meerkov S M, Production systems engineering. Springer ,
NewYork,2009

[2] Li J, Blumenfeld D E, Huang, Alden J M, Throughput analysis of
production systems; recent advances and future topics. International
Journal of production research, 47(14);3823~3851,2009

[3] aedavan A V, Gilbert L, Loop based facility planning and operation
research, 164;1~11, 2005

[4] cao Z X, Zhu Y L, Research on material feeding and its implementation
in general assembly line of mixed model automobile. Computer integrated
manufacturing systems,12(2); 285~291,2006(in Chinese)

[5] Qui WP , Shi H B, Shang W L, The partfeeding management
methodology for mixed model automotive assembly line. Machinery
design and manufacture, 1;138~140, 2008(in Chinese)


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