Improving a Cellular Manufacturing System through Real Time-Simulation and-Measurement.

This paper presents a real time simulator using workers' position data to support a manager's decision making in cellular manufacturing system. The real time simulator is a simulation using the data collected in real time, which is effective in reduce prediction error and support quick decision making. Because of a high analytical cost in the conventional work measurement, it is difficult to continuously collect workers' position and motion data of the cellular manufacturing system in real time. For this purpose, we built an experimental cellular manufacturing line that is able to easily collect the data in real time using the Bluetooth low energy beacons. Next, we analyzed the collected data to extract production cycle time of each product. Finally, we constructed a real time simulation to combine the analyzed workers' position data and a discrete event simulation. The results of the real time measurement with BLE beacons have revealed that, the method is as good as the video camera analysis, but it has a few failures to extract the start of the production cycle time. The results of the real time simulation were able to decrease the prediction error than using the standard work time.