Automatic Line Balancing Using Minimum Number of Systems

You can balance an initial system's operations on the subsystems of a target system using the Minimum number of systems option.

Before you begin: Open a system structure comprising the following:
  • An initial system with operations
  • A target system with subsystems
See Also
About Automatic Line Balancing
Automatic Line Balancing Using Optimized Cycle Time
Automatic Line Balancing Using Pinned Operations
  1. Create a product flow on the subsystems of the target system. For more information, see Creating a Product Flow.


  2. From the Authoring section of the action bar, click Process Gantt , and select the Root system.


  3. From the Authoring section of the action bar, click Automatic Line Balancing .
    The Automatic Line Balancing dialog box appears.
  4. Select the initial system.
  5. Select the target system.
  6. In the dialog box, select the Minimum number of systems option, and specify the Maximum Cycle Time as 40s.
  7. Optional: To allow balancing of operations that exceed the cycle time, select the Overflow systems option.

    Notes:
    • If the option is cleared, these operations are not considered for balancing.
    • This option is ignored if the initial system and target system are the same.

  8. Optional: To remove all existing operations from the target system before balancing afresh, select the Delete balanced operations under target system option.

    Notes:
    • This option is useful to bypass unsolvable constraints for rebalancing.
    • This option is ignored if the initial system and target system are the same.

  9. Click Generate.
    The operations are balanced on the subsystems of the target system.



    The subsystems of the target system are filled according to the product flow sequence. Each subsystem has a cycle time less than or equal to the maximum cycle time (40s). The first subsystem comprises four operations and a cycle time of 40s, the second subsystem comprises two operations and a cycle time of 20s, and the third subsystem is empty.

Note: When the Minimum number of systems option is used, a Maximum Cycle Time parameter needs to be defined for the Automatic Line Balancing capability. However, this maximum cycle time value must not be persistent in the model: it is only used as a specific parameter in the user interface of the Automatic Line Balancing command.