A simulation study to increase the capacity of a rusk production line

Abstract

This study was conducted in a food processing company on its Rusk production line. The goal of the study was to increase the production rate of the line to meet the continuously increasing demand on its product within the existing limited space in the plant. The production line was thoroughly studied and analyzed. Several bottlenecks that were causing sever congestions in different areas on the production line were found. An Arena Simulation model was developed and used to resolve all bottlenecks found on the line and a simulation experiment consisting of seven different scenarios was conducted to search for a good feasible solution to increase the production rate. The changes made in the production line resolved all bottlenecks, improved utilization of all production equipment, eliminated all congestions and most of the queues at all production stations. An increase of about 50% in production and a decrease of 11.4% in average total production time for a box of Rusk in the system were achieved. The capital investment required to implement the new improvements can be paid back in a period of 35 days from the expected profit that would be realized from the additional increased quantity produced. The changes that were made on the production line to achieve the above improvements were adding two new machines, replacing three other old machines, modifying two other machines and decreasing the time of one of the processes, without affecting the quality of the product.