LINE BALANCING AND PERFORMANCE: A STUDY …

1 International Journal of Business and Management Review , , , September 2015. ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK ( ). line BALANCING AND performance : A STUDY OF SELECTED BREWERIES. IN ANAMBRA STATE, NIGERIA. DR. Ikon, and Nwankwo Catherine Nkechi Department of Business Administration, Nnamdi Azikwe University, Awka, Nigeria ABSTRACT: This STUDY presents a heuristic procedure for improving performance in breweries companies. A STUDY of SABM iller (Intafact beverages) Ltd and Life Continental Plc, Anambra State was adopted. The objective of this STUDY is to balance the Production line and improve performance of Hero beer and life beer. In this STUDY , a new heuristic approach, the Rank Positional Weight (RPW) method was used in designing the new production line . Data collected for this research is based on primary information.

2 The finding of the research shows that after line BALANCING the cost of labour decreased by per cent for Hero beer and per cent for Life beer and production line efficiency was found to have increased by per cent for Hero beer and 10 per cent for Life beer. The STUDY recommends that companies should adopt the new production line and empty inspection light should also be replaced with a new one for higher performances. KEYWORDS: Assembly line BALANCING (ALB), BALANCING Techniques, Idle Time, line Efficiency, Task Time, Cycle Time and Bottleneck. INTRODUCTION. Quality product and the capability to cope with customers' demands are important aspects that should be take in to account especially for small and medium industry. Management systems also contribute to planning, controlling and measuring parameters related to the performance of the sectors.

3 Companies should realize that performance depends on how well the production line is in term of output. line BALANCING means BALANCING the production line , or any assembly line . The main objective of line BALANCING is to distribute the task evenly over the work station so that idle time of man of machine can be minimized. line BALANCING primary focus is on minimizing waste related to over production, inventory, defects, transportation, motion, waiting. Assembly line exists when we assemble or handle any device or product in a planned, sequential manner with two or more operators performing tasks of repetitive work at established workstation (Milas, 1990). When the products have many operations and the demand is high the process of BALANCING the line becomes more difficult. Statement of the Problems The production line of Life lager and Hero lager was experiencing a technical problem of high idle time, high labour cost and low line efficiency.

4 This problem is as a result of imperfect allocation of work along various workstations. This uneven work distribution indicated that the production line of Life and Hero Lager Beer is unbalanced and inefficient, which will tend to reduce the productivity of the company. 29. ISSN: 2052-6393(Print), ISSN: 2052-6407(Online). International Journal of Business and Management Review , , , September 2015. ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK ( ). Objectives of the STUDY The overall objective of this paper is to improve performance of Hero and Life lager through line BALANCING by minimizing both labour and idle times on the production line . This paper intends to investigate and evaluate the line BALANCING problem in a production line of Hero lager Beer and Life lager Beer .The paper seeks to: i. To identify the idle time at each workstations and how it can be reduced.

5 Ii. To assign tasks to workstations on the production lines in order to minimize number of stations while satisfying cycle time, precedence, location, and station-type constraints. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE. Fleszar and Hindi (2003) present a work on enumerative heuristic and reduction methods for the assembly line BALANCING problem. They presented a new heuristic algorithm and new reduction techniques for the type 1 assembly line BALANCING problem. The new heuristic was based on the Hoffmann heuristic and builds solutions from both sides of the precedence network to choose the best. The reduction techniques aimed at augmenting precedence, conjoining tasks and increasing operation times. A test was carried out on a well-known benchmark set of problem instances;. testify to the efficacy of the combined algorithm, in terms of both solution quality and optimality verification, as well as to its computational efficiency.

6 Kilincci, (2011) worked on firing sequences backward algorithm for simple assembly line BALANCING problem of type 1 and published their work on the same. The objective of simple assembly line BALANCING problem type-1 (SALBP-1) was to minimize the number of workstations on an assembly line for a given cycle time. A new heuristic algorithm was presented to solve the problem. The presented algorithm makes an order of firing sequence of transitions from Petri net model. Task was assigned to a workstation using this order and backward procedure METHODOLOGY. The Ranked Positional Weight Heuristic was used in this STUDY to design the proposed model for Hero and Life lager beer production line . It was introduced by Helgeson and Birnie in 1961. In this method, a Ranked Positional Weight value (RPW) is computed for each element. The RPW.

7 Takes into account both the Tek value and its position in the precedence diagram. Specially, RPWk is calculated by summing Tek and all other times for elements that follow Tek in the arrow chain of the precedence diagram. Data Presentation and Analysis of Data The work elements (or tasks) that make up the production line of Hero and Life lager beer are Carrying pallets of hero and life lager beer from the store by the forklift to Carrying a pallet to the store by forklift and it is represented by 1 to 12. 30. ISSN: 2052-6393(Print), ISSN: 2052-6407(Online). International Journal of Business and Management Review , , , September 2015. ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK ( ). This figure below shows the Precedence diagram of Hero and Life lager beer production line : 19 22. 17 18 20 21. 16. 15.

8 14. 13. 12. 11. 10. 9. 8. 5. 7. 6. 4. 3. 2. Source: Author's Design 1. 31. ISSN: 2052-6393(Print), ISSN: 2052-6407(Online). International Journal of Business and Management Review , , , September 2015. ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK ( ). In this STUDY all times are in seconds. The time STUDY top sheet was conducted on one pallet of 60cl bottle of Hero and Life Lager Beer. One pallet contains 48 crates, which contains 12 bottles each. Therefore, the total number of bottles in one pallet is 576 bottles. The time STUDY top sheet reveals the observed time, basic time, number of work elements, numbers of workstations, numbers of workers, production volume, and production time. The existing production line of Hero Lager Beer has 9 workstation, 22 work elements, 480 units production volume, 8 hours shift production time 14 numbers of workers on the production line , Life Lager Beer has 9 workstation, 22 work elements, 400 units production volume, 12 hours shift production time 15 workers excluding one supervisor on the production line .

9 The production line comprises machines and workers. The production line was monitored and operation of the line was analyzed in this research paper.( see Appendix 1 and 2). The production line of Hero lager beer is operational for 12 hours in seconds daily. Cycle time = Available time per day in seconds Desirable production output = 3600 x 12 = 108. 400. The production line of Life lager beer is operational for 12 hours in seconds daily. Cycle time = Available time per day in seconds Desirable production output = 3600 x 8 = 60. 480. Sample Calculation of the existing Production line : Idle time per day (Hero Beer) = Total idle time per station One hour in seconds = 697 = hours 3600. Idle time per day (Life Beer) = Total idle time per station One hour in seconds = 249 = 3600. 32. ISSN: 2052-6393(Print), ISSN: 2052-6407(Online).

10 International Journal of Business and Management Review , , , September 2015. ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK ( ). line efficiency (Hero Beer) = Total Station time x 100%. Cycle time x no of workstation = 275 x 100%. 108 x 9. = line efficiency ( Life Beer) = Total station time x 100%. Cycle time x no. of workstation = 291 x 100%. 60 x 9. = or 54%. Balance Delay (BD) = Idle time of all workstations Available working time for all stations BD = (100 LE). = (100 ) %. = Balance delay (BD) = Idle time of all workstations = Available working time for all stations BD = (100-LE). = (100-54)%. = 46%. Balance Efficiency (Hero beer) = Theoretical minimum no. of workers Actual no. of workers Theoretical minimum no. of worker = T. CT. Since, Total time, T = W1T1 + W2T2 + W3T3 + + WyTy = 3 x 29 + 1 x 16 + 2 x 28 +.