Improving electric motor assembly using one piece flow, ergonomics, and cellular layout

Manufacturing organizations continuously strive to improve their performance to survive in the competitive market. This study aims to improve the performance of a production line by utilizing a discrete event simulation model for manufacturing the rotor part of an electric motor. While previous studies have focused primarily on technical factors, this paper addresses the shortage of research on the impact of physical ergonomics on production line performance. By integrating human movements into other improvement methods, this study proposes four strategies: One-piece flow, elimination of unnecessary human motions, their integration, and switching to a Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS). The results demonstrate that the adoption of the one-piece flow among some workstations increases productivity and utilization of resources by about 21% and 9%, respectively. However, the elimination of the unnecessary motions resulted in insignificant improvement due machine’s automatic nature. Lastly, the study found that converting the production line into a CMS resulted in a significant increase in productivity (32%), maximum resource utilization (17%), and a decrease in work in process (40%). (Received in January 2023, accepted in May 2023. This paper was with the authors 1 month for 1 revision.)