Adaptive Line Balancing: Effective Control of Production Lines

Abstract

With raising prices on energy, companies will need to find solutions which lowers the energy consumption to cut their costs. One way of decreasing the energy consumption could be finding a solution which adapt the speeds or shut down machines and conveyors in production systems depending of the situation. In this report a new concept of an adaptive control system is evaluated. By counting the Work- In-Progress within segments the adaptive control system decides the speeds of the machines and conveyors in real time. The expected outcome of the production system is improved production rate, decrease of starvation and blocking, improvement of gentle handling with smoother operations and reduction of energy consumption and noise. The goal was to evaluate the adaptive control system by implementing it in a simulation model of a test system. The project followed Banks methodology but the development of the simulation model was split into four steps where each step was verified separately to ensure functionality and quality of the model. The final simulation model was combined out of the four validated models to give it the functionality needed. The simulation model was then run with and without the adaptive control system and the results were compared. The goal of the project was achieved and ALB was verified to be working in a virtual environment. In a physical test rig the system for counting WIP does not have the accuracy needed for a perfect implementation. The results from ALB in the virtual environment shows that on average the software is able to reduce the machine speeds with 5% while still managing to produce the same throughput as a conventionally steered system. If implemented correctly the effect of this should yield a lower energy consumption, lower the noise, and prolong the life length of machines and conveyors, in factories