Virtual Improvement for quick commissioning of Production Systems

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Kaizen activities are important to improve productivity in the manual assembly operations. However, Kaizen after the production line has been put into operation could not bring about a significant improvement because of short product life cycles in recent years. It is, therefore, effective to achieve kaizen before the startup using the 3D modeling technique. We call such activities virtual improvements. In this study, the procedure of the virtual improvement based on a computer mannequin is proposed and a system to support the virtual improvement is developed. The procedure consists of an initial modeling phase and a model improvement phase. In the initial modeling phase, the system automatically generates human operation models based on the optimization of part tool arrangement. Using this model, the system evaluates human operations in terms of operational difficulty, and suggests points to be improved. The effectiveness of the system is verified using an example of automobile part assembly operations.