Unleashing Productivity

Abstract

The company in question is a company specializing in dosimetry and manufactures radiation monitoring systems that measure radiation in real-time. These systems are used by personnel in industries where there is a risk of radiation exposure, such as surgeons, military personnel, dentists, etc. The systems are placed on the collar of the shirt and can display radiation levels directly on a Human-Machine Interface (HMI), enabling staff to actively see and minimize their exposure to radiation. The company performs calibration on two types of products: new production and service products that require annual calibration. All products must be tested and calibrated using the five existing calibration machines before being delivered to customers. During the calibration process, the company has identified problems with collisions, where operators need to use the same machine simultaneously. This is a problem because it takes a lot of time to wait for the machine to finish calibrating the product before the next one can start being calibrated. If, instead, the calibration machines can be used in a more optimal way, this can largely be avoided. To address this, the company is exploring the possibility of optimizing the calibration processes to minimize collisions, including the development of a scheduling system that can efficiently plan calibrations daily. The primary goal of the project is to optimize the company's calibration schedule to make the process more cost-effective. With the help of the simulation software PlantSim, the plan is to visualize both current and future improved production flows and create a user-friendly scheduling tool. The project primarily focuses on optimizing the use of the five older calibration machines. An additional goal is to investigate whether an operator can handle two calibration processes simultaneously if time allows after the primary goal of solving the collision issue has been achieved. In current production it takes 810 minutes to calibrate 10 products, this with a distribution of 70% service products and 30% new products. A simulation shows that this can be reduced to 589 minutes, which increases productivity by 138%. By following the simulated calibration order, the time can be further reduced to 340 minutes. An optimal workflow can theoretically be created with simulation methods. With Siemens PlantSim, a factory simulation can visualize the flow and calibration process. For maximum efficiency, all machines should work simultaneously, with one Maskin1 available for certain steps. Five different products should be calibrated at the same time. With one or two operators, as many machines as possible should be kept running to optimize the flow.