| 摘要 |
Conventional manufacturing line designing had a problem in that, when making the number of places for keeping partly-finished products (number of buffers) more appropriate in a factory layout, calculation took considerable time because a design proposal was selected through trial and error and a manufacturing line simulation was executed each time a design proposal was selected. A manufacturing line designing apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in being provided with: a production simulation execution unit that predicts future production capacity and the number of partly-finished products by simulating a manufacturing line; a buffer utilization rate calculation unit that calculates a buffer utilization rate that is the ratio of the number of buffers for each of the processes with respect to the maximum number of buffers and the average number of buffers during the simulation period; and a number-of-buffers reducing unit that reduces the number of buffers successively, starting from a process having a low buffer utilization rate, and repeats the calculation until the total number of buffers is minimized, to determine the number of buffers to be placed between the processes. |
