Production Scheduling in Sandwich Panel Industry

Abstract

Alex group factories are in Alexandria, supplies steel to construction material and steel manufacturing companies. It started a new project called Alex Panel, which produces a new product called sandwich panel. Sandwich panel is a new type of construction panels, it has a continuous production line. Sandwich panels are an ideal building material for modern industrial structures. They're tough but simple to operate. Thermoregulation, soundproofing, and fire protection. Two metal sheets with chemical foam in between. Both sides are shaped with dies so it can fit with each other’s to make wall panel or roof panel. Alex panel has a critical problem which is number of setups. From the given data collected and observed, it is found out that in each order the workers need to change many dies along the conveyer to be ready for the next product, each product size processed with its own die size. This project focuses on using the appropriate scheduling that minimized 63% of stoppages to changeover in four weeks implementation. The production system was facing bottlenecks among their processes. Therefore, appropriate analytic tools such as scheduling techniques were used to avoid number of stops with the help of Simulation Arena Software, as it is one of the most powerful tools available in a decision making