Development of a lean manufacturing system for shop floor productions

This article presents a scheduling algorithm for production planning, which involves the management of resources like equipment, tools, personnel, materials etc. The scheduling algorithm implements some of the principles of Just-In-Time manufacturing and has a combination of finite and infinite scheduling techniques. The scheduling algorithm uses a database, such as MS Access, SQL server or Oracle etc, and is proven to reduce the total production time. In the case study, the production time for an order of 750 Apron Hooks, the production time was reduced by 36 machine hours (4 days) from 224 hours to 188 hours. A test bed has been created as a container to this algorithm, and supports the editing of the schedule generated by the algorithm. The test bed also enables the drawing of shop layouts and shows the flow of material through the different machines in the layout. The test bed features process layouts, which are graphical representations of routing sheets. It can also calculate the Work In Progress at any time during the production process. Thus it helps in analyzing the production plans and in improving them.