ABSTRACT
The manufacture of porcelain figures has traditionally been craft based. High levels of skill and artistic ability are necessary to produce the figures to a consistently high quality. The ability to label them as hand-painted adds considerable value in terms of marketability. The manufacturing company involved in the project described in this paper wished to investigate the possibility of introducing automation where possible but keeping the necessary highly skilled manual tasks to maintain their marketing advantages. The project was to assess, by the use of discrete event simulation, the proposed design. Manning levels, buffer and conveyor capacities, mould
retrieval, cleaning and storage equipment, oven and drying area capacities and packing facilities are some of the input parameters that need sizing relative to each other for a range of demand patterns. A spreadsheet model was also developed to compare the economics of the proposed line with the traditional totally manual line. Because of commercial confidentiality, no reference is made to the company or the actual parameters that describe the proposed system. The methods used and lessons learnt are nevertheless of interest to anyone involved in assessing the viability of a proposed manufacturing system.
