What is the objective of assembly line balancing?

 Discussion topic and question (just a few paragraphs are required, doesn’t need to be too long)

What is the objective of assembly line balancing? How would you deal with a situation in which one worker, although trying hard, is 20 percent slower than the other 10 people on a line?

Respond to two peers discussions below (just need a few sentences in the response)

Peer 1

Assembly line balancing is a production strategy that sets an intended rate of production to produce a particular product within a particular time frame. The assembly line must be successfully designed and tasks needs to be distributed among workers, machines and work stations ensuring that every line segments in the production process can be met within the time frame and available production capacity.

A classic manual assembly line have different workers performing assembly tasks at each
workstation whilst assembled items are moved on a conveyor system from workstation
to workstation. In order for the line to run smoothly the work has to be distributed almost equal or equally in order to achieve a balanced assembly system.  These times are highly dependent on the difference in speed or skills of the worker and the processes used at each work station.

As far as a worker working 20% slower than the other 10 people on a line, I would do proper training before I put a person on an assembly line to see where their strongest and weakest strength where. We all know that everyone doesn’t work at the same speed. Once I did my training I would put that person in a position where he/she worked successfully. Another alternative would be to rotate the workers among the different stations of the assembly line and this will play a huge part in system efficiency and workforce flexibility. 

If the first two methods don’t workout I would re-arrange the activities based on individual workstations so that the total processing time can be optimized and the effort – well balanced, leading to optimum level of production. 

https://www.whatissixsigma.net/assembly-line-balancing/

Peer 2:

 The purpose of assembly line balancing is to minimize the idle time of tasks at workstations by producing a product in the most efficient manner possible and with the most optimal productivity time. The objective of assembly line balancing would be to increase profits and decrease costs, a strategic advantage for companies.(SixSigma, 2019) The steps to balancing an assembly line can be achieved through, specifying sequential relationships of tasks, workstation cycle time, number of workstations, tasks primary-secondary rule, assigning tasks, and efficiency of balance. The proper order and arrangement of tasks, workstations, and workers produces a optimized balanced assembly line leading to increased efficiency, production, and profit for the company. 

       As a manager faced with a worker 20 percent slower than the other 10 people working the assembly line, I would have to evaluate and watch the slower worker to see if there was a obvious reason they are slower.  Then I would determine if the slower worker is causing the assembly line to be inefficient and unbalanced. If there is a obvious reason and the efficiency of the line is being compromised by the slower person, I would correct the problem with retraining the slower person. If the slower worker couldn’t be retrained and is causing a unbalanced assembly line by delaying the workstation cycle time and slowing the over all production, I would have to rebalance the line and reassign the slower worker. Hopefully, there is a person somewhere else in the plant that is faster at their job than necessary and could be easily switched with the slower person. The slower person could also be reassigned to a workstation that has more idle time, then the slower worker would not be causing a inefficient workstation cycle time and would rebalance the assembly line.

Reference

SixSigma.net (Links to an external site.). (2019). Assembly Line Balancing. Retrieved on January 27, 2020 from, 

https://www.whatissixsigma.net/assembly-line-balancing/

ANSWER

The assembly-line balancing has an objective, and it is to create efficiency between the workstations and tasks to reduce idle time. At the same time, it is used to determine the assigning of tasks to workstations to achieve a predetermined objective. Minimizing the number of workstations while maximizing the rate of production are other common objectives. Primarily, it is the decision process that facilitates the assigning of tasks within the system for serial production. One of the tasks is the elemental operations necessary for the conversion of raw materials into finished goods. Accordingly, the situation as described would be dealt with by training the slower employers to increase their speed to catch up with the faster workers. Faster workers can also assist their counterparts in terms of a line permit.

Response To Peer Discussions             In the first peer response, the assembly-line balancing is more or less similar to my description, although the explanation is more detailed/elaborate since the student also touched on various line segments in the process of production. I think it was important since it is clearer because the student also emphasized on what is necessary to ensure that…