Abstract:
Abstract
The nascentwave of disruptive competition in the current business environment
brought about by the fourth industrial revolution (Fashion 4.0 or Apparel 4.0)
is enormous. Therefore, it is important for the apparel industry to be flexible
enough to respond quickly to the unstable customers’ demand through continuous
improvement of their process efficiency and productivity. This study
proposed assembly line balancing problem (ALBP) for complex garment assembly
line using simulation-based optimization under stochastic task times. The
proposed ALBP solution approach aimed at minimizing the cycle time for a
given number of workstations with consideration of constraints on number of
resources, precedence relations, and resource types. The empirical study was
conducted at Southern Range Nyanza Limited (NYTIL) garment facility and a
complex trouser assembly line with 69 workstations was considered. The discrete
event simulation of the trouser assembly line was developed using Arena
simulation software. The local optimal solution was obtained from simulation
experiments whichwas adopted for the optimization process. TheOptQuest tool
was used to solve a single objective optimization with discrete control values.
The results showed that the average throughput increased by 30% for local optimal
line balancing and 55% for global optimal line balancing. Consequently, the
cycle time reduced by 23% and 36%, respectively.
