Line balancing is a production strategy that helps businesses in mass production processes. It helps improve productivity and cost reduction by assigning the correct number of workers and machinery to a particular task. It allows companies to maintain a time frame for a specific job.
In this article, you will learn what line balancing is and how it improves productivity and efficiency in production in time.
What is Line Balancing?
Line balancing is a technique that helps businesses to increase product speed to fulfill customers' demands on time. It is also called load balancing and helps in minimizing productionwaste. This method of production leveling is a must to manage supply chain operations.
Balancing resources and machinery to avoid wastage and maximize profits can result in higher productivity. This balance helps managers easily assign workers and machinery for a specific time to meet the target production rate.
Line Balancing in Manufacturing
Line balancing in the manufacturing industry is vital in balancing production rates and fulfilling customer demand in time. It involves balancing managers and machine time per the production rate and takt time.
The takt time is the rate at which products are produced to fulfill orders shipment on time. Production operations are perfectly balanced if the production time is the same as the takt time. It removes problems and smoothens the supply chain.
The Benefits of Production Line Balancing
The benefits of production line balancing are mentioned below.
1. Reduce Waiting Waste
Line balancing helps the working of machinery and the operators stay balanced. The balance guarantees that every machinery or operator is well-rested and functional. It reduces waiting waste by minimizing downtime.
2. Reduce Inventory Waste
Inventory waste is a type of waste that represents the wastage of products due to mishandling of inventory. It reduces production rate, and production time is far from takt time.
3. Absorb Irregularities
A balanced production line absorbs all internal and external irregularities in the supply chain. It keeps the production chain flexible enough to avoid delays and always deliver timely products.
4. Reduce Production Costs For Maximum Profits
When production costs are less, profits are higher. It is the result of operations when machinery and workers are in coordination. Using all resources at their full potential can help businesses to achieve maximum profits with minimum production costs.
How can you achieve line balancing?
To achieve line balancing, follow these steps:
1. Calculate Takt Time
Balancing the production line requires the production rate equal to Takt time. To find the value of Takt time, managers should divide available working time per shift by customer demand per shift rate.
2. Perform Time Studies
Time studies help managers to understand the schedule required to complete a task. It also tells how much machinery and operator time each process will take to complete production. Businesses use software for better data collection and analysis to calculate exact time studies.
3. Identify Problems
When it's time for data analysis about time studies, businesses look for processes delaying the production line. In other words, it helps companies identify and solve problems for smoother production operations.
4. Reallocate Resources
Businesses also reallocate resources when problems are found. They also aim to avoid any blockage or burden of workload. This relocation helps employees to relax and use their abilities in other operations. It allows businesses to increase productivity by combining workstations and processes to make operations faster.
5. Make Other Improvements
With emerging technology, businesses can use applications and software to find defects and improve productivity. These software are beneficial for companies in balancing the resources in increasing production rate.
How to Optimize Line Balancing Process?
It is important to improve the line-balancing process to reduce delays. It involves the following steps:
1. Shift Excess Capacity to Problem Areas
Reassign workers and equipment that are overburdened and delaying the production line. It will eliminate waiting waste and increase productivity.
2. Simplify Manual Activities
Manual activities among operators should be distributed with a fair division of workload. If manual work is assigned to software, managers must reassign the workers to other processes for a better work culture.
3. Assigning Tasks based on Availability
Businesses can also use software and programs to assign tasks to departments in which multiple employees work. It results in better distribution of work and improves production rate.
4. Setting Up Real-Time Support System
By setting up a real-time support system, businesses can quickly identify and resolve all issues and faults in the production line to avoid delays.
Assembly Line Balancing
Assembly line balancing is the process of managing workflow and maintaining production rates. With proper and timely task and resource distribution to operations, businesses can balance production time with takt time. This balance increases revenue and makes demands fulfillment on time.
With assembly line balancing, businesses can guarantee that the time taken by each process is balanced. It is helpful for companies in mass production industries. It can be achieved by equal task distribution among employees and all equipment for optimized production lines.
Optimize Your Line Balancing With TranZact
TranZact helps businesses to improve productivity and earnings with a better production line. It allows companies to balance production and demand to ensure stable revenue growth. With TranZact, you can identify and resolve all issues and time delays in the production line rapidly.
FAQs on Line Balancing
1. What is the line balancing formula?
The line balancing formula for efficiency is the sum of all task times divided by the number of workstations. It will then be multiplied with cycle time to give efficiency.
2. What is line balancing?
Line balancing is a process that involves balancing the operator with machine time to make the production rate equal to takt time.
3. What are line balancing methods used for?
Line balancing methods help with repetitive tasks such as automobile manufacturing, track home construction, and railwork laying.
4. What is production line balancing?
Production line balancing involves the division of work between workers and machines. It helps maintain the workflow balance and eliminates overburden on any operator or machine.
5. What do you understand about the line of balance technique?
The line of Balance technique is a management control process for collecting, calculating, and presenting facts related to time, cost, and goals according to a specific plan. It represents repetitive work in a graph using a single line.
6. What are bottlenecks?
A bottleneck is when any business slows down or shuts its production due to some blockage. It is of two types. One is a temporary bottleneck, and the other is a long-term bottleneck.
7. What is the assembly line formula?
To find the balance between the assembly and production lines, the placement hours should be divided by the staffed time hours, which are multiplied by 100. The result will give assembly line balancing.
8. What is lead time?
Lead time is the total time a business takes from receiving an order to delivering the item. The formula for lead time is the delivery date minus the date the order is placed.
