Sara Alszer

Contemporary aspects of car sequencing problem in a paint shop

The article presents a problem of car sequencing from the perspective of the paint shop requirements. The issue of determining production orders depending on a color, on which a body is painted, has been considered in the literature several times. However, the assumptions proposed by scientists simplified greatly the analyzed problem in relation to the existing industrial solutions and requirements. The purpose of conducted analysis is to demonstrate a need for a completely new approach to sequencing problem, taking into account an actual structure of a car production line and organization of work in a paint shop.

Virtual Commissioning as the Main Core of Industry 4.0 – Case Study in the Automotive Paint Shop

The paper focuses on presentation of innovative paint shop concept for automotive industry, based on Industry 4.0 idea. Work begins with introduction of Virtual Engineering and Virtual Commissioning methods. Using virtual environments to test and verify new solutions allows to check them efficiency before implementing these ideas in the real plant. The main goal of the research is to improve paint shop efficiency and productivity. The simulation station, used for the purpose of research, is presented from hardware and software point of view. For the considered case study new selected heuristics, based on modification of existing ones, are proposed. The obtained results are compared and presented in the paper.

Analysis and Simulation of Internal Transport in the High Storage Warehouse

The transport plays a growing role in the integrated logistics management of semifinished products and components flow. For manufacturing companies, it is important to maximize the use of production resources and optimize the process in terms of both production costs and time. The use of specific means of transport and correct organization of material flow are fundamental in order to assure continuity of production. The exemplary means of transport, their characteristics, and purpose are presented in this article. One of the elements included in the production systems and used to reduce the number of unplanned downtimes are warehouses. They may be small structures placed near workstations, storage buffers along the supply chain, or the separate buildings with a height up to several tens of meters. The choice of storage solution depends on both the profile of the industrial company and the destination of goods storage area. Due to highly complicated processes of warehouses design and management, the computer systems are currently used. These systems support the processes and allow to carry out necessary simulations. An example of using a support application, a discussion of the conducted simulations and analysis of result are presented in the final part of this paper.

Complex Approach to the Control of Car Body Buffering in the Paint Shop

The paper presents the approach to the car buffering problem in the paint shop from the perspective of modern industrial plant requirements. The control of buffering process is connected with sequencing problem. A sequence, in which car bodies are painted is particularly important, because the minimization of the number of painting guns changeovers results in minimizing production costs. The problem of car sequencing has been widely considered in the literature. However, a large number of assumptions and simplifications, made by the researchers, make it impossible to apply developed solutions in practice. The paper considers the car sequencing issue taking into account problems that occur on the production line in the real paint shop. After presenting the algorithm, used in the analyzed plant, four sequencing algorithms, used to define the output sequence from the buffer, are discussed. Two algorithms are modifications of the well known scheduling heuristics – that are SPT and LPT methods. Based on these rules and follow-up control idea two new algorithms are proposed. The input sequence is determined in one of two ways. The correctness of the car body buffer control in the paint shop was verified in the test carried out using innovative method – virtual commissioning. The aim of the research was to identify the most effective methods that will be developed in the future. During tests, the buffer flow was monitored in order to identify unfavorable buffering situations deemed unacceptable in real conditions. The most unfavorable cases are presented and discussed in the article.

Multi-objective optimization of the number of transport resources in the high-bay warehouse

The transport plays a growing role in the integrated logistics management of semi-finished products and components flow. For manufacturing companies it is important to maximize the use of production resources, minimize the number of transport resources and optimize the process, in terms of both production costs and time. The use of specific means of transport and correct organization of material flow are fundamental in order to assure continuity of production and to deliver products to the customer just in time. Due to highly complicated processes of organization and management of material flow, computer systems are currently used. Based on this type of application, some necessary simulations were carried out. These tests were aimed at investigating the impact of the number of transport resources on handling time of high-bay warehouse. On this basis, a methodology of defining a multi-objective function and determining weights of each objective are presented. The conducted analysis allowed to select the most effective number of internal transport resources in exemplary warehouse. The obtained results, particular stages of conducted analysis and conclusions were presented in this paper.