Efficiency improvement in furniture manufacturing industry using simulation method

Developing technology and competitive conditions lead firms to various process improvement studies to increase their profitability. One of the best studies scheduling that have a significant impact on production cost. Successful scheduling provides benefits such as machinery/labor, completing orders before delivery dates, decreasing the amount of workload waiting in the process and effective use of the facility. In this study, the problem of reducing the operation waiting in the process in the packaging area is discussed in domestic furniture manufacturing industry. During the production, thousands parts belonging to hundreds of products move from different routes and come to the front of packaging. There are some interventions in the queue by the engineers, these interventions causes the other operations be delayed although speed up that work. Firstly, the production system was analyzed and the operations of the products on the machines, routes and processing times were obtained. The products which are frequently produced have been determined and the modeling stage has been started with ABC analysis. At the modeling stage, Arena Rockwell 14.7 simulation program was used. The production system consisting of 171 parts, 51 routes and 43 machines belonging to the four products was transferred to the simulation program by considering the working principles. In the second part of the study, 13 heuristic algorithms, 7 of which are in the literature, 6 of which are belong to the company, were developed and transferred to simulation program. The factory was run in this simulation program for about one month and compared with the current situation in terms of various performance indicators. For statistical consistency of the results, the models were repeated 500 times. When the obtained results are examined, it is seen that some of the developed heuristics give better results than the current situation and the techniques in the literature. When the best heuristic method is taken into consideration, it reduces the average waiting time by 37% compared to the current situation. This study of saving is an average of 5% on the working day per a month and 7% the number of packages produced. When the results are evaluated, it is seen that heuristic algorithm obtained in the study can achieve significant profit if used in large-scale furniture manufacturing industries. Keywords: Scheduling, Furniture Indusrty, Optimization, Simulation, Arena Rockwell.