A Visual Board to Facilitate Production Flow Regulation at Sequential Processes

Abstract

A visual system allows one to assess the production status of a shop floor at a single glance and detect abnormalities like deviations from the production plan. This paper presents a case study of a visual system application on an electronics backend assembly that consists of several mixed-model sequential processes. The production flow is regulated by a push system. Isolated scheduling at the front end significantly contributes to erratic arrival of parts at the backend. A generic visual board was designed and implemented to avoid significant inventory build-up, shorten average flow time, and ensure maximum production leveling. The visual board is named as visual Work-in-progress (WIP) flow monitoring board and is described in terms of its physical appearance, component functions, and operating procedures performed by different levels of staff. The paper also includes the implementation of the visual board and performance evaluation after ten months of execution. The system was found to produce positive results.

Article history: Received (22.03.2014); Revised (25.06.2014); Accepted (02.07.2014)