TY  - BOOK
AU  - Somchai Kunakornporamat
AU  - Pakorn Adulbhan, 
AU  - Techapun  Raengkhum, 
AU  - Sharif,M.N.
ED  - Government of New Zealand, 
TI  - A line balancing design for a wheel-loader plant
T2  - Thesis
PY  - 1976///
CY  - Bangkok
PB  - Asian Institute of Technology
KW  - Assembly-line balancing
N1  - 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
N2  - 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
UR  - http://203.159.5.9/ait-thesis/detail.php?q=B23914
ER  -