Flow shop manufacturing layout as low carbon approach for application in bonding wire drawing industry

¹ Faculty of Engineering and Green Technology, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kampar, Malaysia
² Mechanical Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: joshuaj@utar.edu.my

Abstract

Modern manufacturing environments are yet to fulfil the evergrowing competitive supply and demand due to the limitation of conventional production approaches. A low-carbon approach incorporating the change from process to product-centric manufacturing systems could conserve energy while fulfilling supply and demand requirements in a competitive market. Current study had conducted a case study in a bonding wire factory that operates on process-oriented system with job shop layout. Preliminary data collection had assessed the existing practices on the factory's shop floor, and simulation model using WITNESS software was developed using this data. A job shop to flow shop conversion framework was developed with the integration of factors such as shop floor layout, order release, and dispatch rule play crucial roles in the conversion process of the production system. Based on the application of the conversion framework encompassing six future production system models, CL-SPT model which uses flow shop as layout, CONLOAD as order release and shortest processing time as the dispatch rule is selected as the best performing and economical production system. This model enhanced the output and average flow time by 2.7% and 27.7%, respectively, in tandem with low-carbon requisites while retaining machine utilization performance equivalent to the conventional system.