Planning of dynamic layouts for the field assembly of XXL-products under competing floor space demands

• Applicant: Dr.-Ing. Georg Ullmann
• Subject Area: Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 251648490

Products with big dimensions such as packaging or book binding machines (so-called XXL-products) are often assembled in a field assembly. Areas needed for running the assembly process such as material buffers or assembly areas change their position and size during the assembly process. In the case of simultaneous assembly of more than one product, in the phase of layout planning often more floor space is reserved statically per product than is actually needed. So far planning methods and guidelines are missing for planning the cooperative use of one common floor space by more than one product. This circumstance prevents an efficient use of the bottleneck resource floor space. This research project aims for the development of a method for planning dynamic layouts for the field assembly of xxl-products under competing floor space demands. Furthermore knowledge on how to design the assembly process and the structure of assembling areas in order to achieve high floor space utilization is to be generated. To achieve this goal, it is planned, to develop an analytical method for the planning of layouts with a dynamic change of the single areas in the layout on one common area for more than one product. The method shall contain a mathematical optimization problem and an algorithm for solving this problem. In addition the method shall be used to analyze the impact of the variation of certain parameters of the optimization problem on the efficiency of floor space usage. The results of the research project shall be used to obtain a better usage of the bottleneck resource floor space in the field assembly of xxl-products and therefore to reduce logistical costs while simultaneously achieving a high logistical performance. Especially in times of an economic boom this may help companies to generate higher sales.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants