• IE interfaces
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.144-152
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• 2009

Assembly line has been recognized as an efficient production system in mass production. However, the recent production environment characterized as mass customization urges production managers to transform a long assembly line to a number of short assembly cells. To maximize the utilization of resources in an assembly cell, it is important to have the line balanced. This paper presents a bucket brigade-based assembly cell. Bucket brigade is a way of coordinating workers who progressively perform a set of assembly operations on a flow line. Each worker follows a simple rule: perform assembly operations on a product until the next worker downstream takes it over; then go back to the previous worker upstream to take over a new assembly job. In this way, the line balances itself. The bucket brigade assembly cell is analyzed and compared with traditional assembly lines and general assembly cells. The paper also discusses some prerequisite requirements and limitations when the bucket brigade assembly cells are employed.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.36-46
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• 2005

In traditional production lines, such as assembly lines, each worker is usually assigned to a fixed task, which is beneficial since it reduces the amount of training needed for workers to master their assigned tasks. However, when workers complete their tasks at different speeds, the slowest worker will determine the overall pace of the production line and limit production. To avoid this problem, the self-balancing production line was introduced. In this type of production line, each worker works dynamically, thus they can maintain balanced production. Previous research analyzing the performance of these lines has ignored the walk-back time associated with dynamic workers. U-shaped production lines have also been analyzed and policies for such lines have been proposed. However, the walk-back time cannot be ignored in practice, and research taking this factor into account is needed to enable balanced production and thus the maximum production rate. In this paper, we propose production policies for a production line with the walk-back time taken into account, and define and analyze the conditions for self-balancing. Furthermore, we have compared the performance of such a line with that of other production lines under the same conditions, and the results show the superiority of this line in certain cases.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.330-337
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• 2015

A bucket-brigade is a way of transporting items where items are passed from one person to the next. The operation of the bucket brigade imitates the cooperative behavior of ants when brood, food or other resources are moved. Koo (2009) presented a bucket brigade-based assembly cell where each worker follows a simple rule: perform assembly operations on a product until the next worker downstream takes it over; then go back to the previous worker upstream to take over a new assembly job. In this way, the flow line is self-balanced without any predetermined job assignment. However, there are some productivity losses related to hand-off and blocking. This paper examines the hand-off and blocking losses and presents a new bucket brigade-based assembly cell where working areas for each assembler is restricted with the help of buffer interfaces. Simulation experiments are used to validate the performance of the new assembly system.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.197-202
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• 2011

In traditional production lines, such as assembly lines, each worker is usually assigned to a particular fixed work, and decreasing the task to master the assigned work is valuated. However, when an imbalance exists between workers' speeds, if a worker delays the overall work in the production line, the production rate of the particular line will also decrease. To avoid this problem, the "Self-Balancing Production Line" was introduced. In this type of production line, each worker is assigned work dynamically, and when specific conditions are satisfied, production remains balanced. Characteristics of these lines that can be preempted at any place have already been analyzed by some researchers. A previous paper examined the situation in which only a single worker can process one machine and cannot preempt processing, and the improved policy of an ordinary selfbalancing production line, which specifies which stations workers can process and how workers can behave. This policy achieveda high production rate with only four stations and two workers (Buzacott, 2002). In that paper, worker processing stations and the behavior of a specific worker were limited, andthe paper focused only on specific stations and workers. Therefore, it is not applicable to any worker sequence. In this paper, we focus on other ways to decrease cycle time. In this kind of line, a worker processes at his or her speed. Therefore, if a worker is assigned stations according to his or her speed, the line can decrease cycle time. To do so, we relax the assumptions of this type of line and set a new condition. Under these conditions, we compare our results to the results of previous papers.