Integrated balancing of multiple straight assembly lines: A case study in manufacturing of automatic door systems

In this thesis, the application of integrated balancing of multiple straight assembly lines in the company operating in Konya and producing automatic door systems has been carried out. The lines have been balanced using the mathematical model developed by Gökçen et al., (2010). First of all, the assembly lines, which was considered within the scope of the study, was introduced and the task and priority relations in the assembly lines were determined. Then, an integrated balancing was performed with the cycle time determined based on the sales of the previous years. Optimum assignment information is given in the integrated balancing of assembly lines for the determined cycle time. The number of workers needed for the production, which was carried out with 9 workers in the current situation before balancing, was reduced to 3 workers as a result of balancing, resulting in an improvement of 66%. As a result of the implementation, the production made on an area of 400 m2 at present was reduced to an area of 80 m2 with a gain of 80% by obtaining common stations. In the scenario analysis made for eight different cycle time values, it was seen that the number of stations obtained with the integrated balancing approach in seven of the solutions was lower than the case of independent balancing of the lines. Thus, thanks to the common stations to be opened as a result of the Integrated balancing approach, a significant flexibility has been gained in terms of minimizing the total number of stations. This study is extremely important in terms of real-life application of a problem in the literature.