A Somchai Kunakornporamat creator Pakorn Adulbhan Chairperson Techapun Raengkhum Examination Committee Sharif, M. N. Examinaion Committee Government of New Zealand Scholarship Donor text th Bangkok Asian Institute of Technology 1976 monographic eng

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67 p. The main purpose of this study is to redesign a production line for a wheel-loader assembly plant. The plant concerned manufactures wheel-loaders whose design has been modified specifically to handle agricultural products, particularly tapioca and rice, which make up a large proportion of Thailand's export trade. This modified wheel-loader is extensively used throughout the Northeastern part of the country. The existing 11-work-station production line is a feasible one, in which many in-process inventories are found at some points along the production line, while non can be found at other points. The steps of the study are: (i) investigating the existing process in the wheel-loader assembly plant; (ii) breaking down the process into a set of work elements, each of which is associated with work element time and precedence requirements; (iii) applying a selected line balancing technique called "Optimum-Seeking Backtracking Technique" to· this line balancing problem and (iv) discussing the results obtained from Step (iii), and then drawing conclusions from the study. To redesign a production line, the work elements are grouped and assigned to a sequence of work stations, with the objective of minimizing the cycle time, subject to the precedence requirements and the total number of work stations not exceeding a specified line length. Eleven production lines whose lengths vary. from 5 to 15 work stations are obtained from the study. A comparison between the existing 11 work-station production line and the proposed 11-work-station production line shows that, by replacing the former with the latter, approximately 40% of labor costs per wheel-loader can be saved, and the cycle time can also be reduced from 25 down to 15 hours. A computer program written for this study is used in Step (iii). It can also be applied in solving similar line balancing problems. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering of the Asian Institute of Technology Bangkok, Thailand. Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1976 Assembly-line balancing Asian Institute of Technology. http://203.159.5.9/ait-thesis/detail.php?q=B23914 http://203.159.5.9/ait-thesis/detail.php?q=B23914 160398 20260818145540.0