Title: Automotive robotic body shop simulation for performance improvement using plant feedback

Authors: Annamalai Pandian, Ahad Ali

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lawrence Technological University, 21000 W Ten Mile Road, Southfield, MI 48075, USA. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lawrence Technological University, 21000 W Ten Mile Road, Southfield, MI 48075, USA

Abstract: This paper illustrates how to improve robotic automotive body shop throughput by feeding back actual plant data for input variables for entities to improve discrete simulation model prediction and validation. The input variables are adjusted based on actual plant data, and the simulation model was run for various scenarios to verify and validate the discrete simulation model. The general tendency in an automotive plant body shop is to buy more equipment to improve throughput. It is very interesting to see how mean time to repair/mean time between failure assumptions affect the throughput. The bottleneck issues are identified for automotive plant to improve throughput.

Keywords: automotive body shops; performance improvement; robotics; plant feedback; plant data; input variables; discrete simulation models; simulation model validation; simulation model prediction; equipment purchase; improved throughput; repair times; mean time; failure assumptions; bottlenecks; USA; United States; industrial engineering; systems engineering.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2011.038980

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2011 Vol.7 No.3, pp.269 - 291

Published online: 31 Jan 2015 *

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