Simulação para validar novo cenário de produção em linha de montagem

Abstract

In the automotive industry, efforts have been made to optimize processes in assembly lines following the concepts of Lean Manufacturing. One of these processes is the supply of components to workstations within the factory. Just-in-time is one of the pillars of the Lean philosophy that seeks to eliminate logistical waste. This work addresses a real case of a heavy vehicle assembly line, where an automatic nylon tube-cutting machine was planned to be installed. As a logistical solution, it was intended to employ an AGV to transport the cut pipes to the points of use. For the managers of this company, there was a need to validate the capacity of this new scenario to meet production demand. The delivery of these components became more complex because the AGV can take different routes, which made it interesting to use more sophisticated methods to validate this new production scenario. For this, a simulation was proposed to create a virtual model of the line. Thus, it was possible to assertively verify that the machine, combined with the AGV, can meet the factory’s needs and under what conditions. This research followed a step-by-step methodology to combine production engineering concepts, AGVs, Lean Manufacturing, tube-cutting machines, and process simulation. A project was carried out using Scrum methodology to investigate the company’s case, study the simulation software, and create the model, applying the knowledge in this text. A complete simulation of the scenario was developed using the Plant Simulation software. The model used customized programs to parameterize the process variables. Results that validated that the newly proposed scenario was plausible were delivered through experimentation. Furthermore, the best parameter configuration to optimize the use of the machine was verified.