Aker Finnyards – Production planning tool

Background

Aker Finnyards (later STX and now Meyer Turku) is a shipyard specialised in demanding ship-building projects. One of the yard’s core sections is a plate forming line that contains several work phases. Sometimes the plate line forms a bottleneck critical to the whole ship-building process, so its efficient control is very important.
EP-Logistics has created a simulation-based tool for Aker Finnyards to plan and optimise the production in the plate line.

The assignment and the results

The user friendly simulation tool can be utilised to quickly inspect and optimise different kind of production programs. With the tool, the implementability of a planned production program can be ensured, with the schedule demands and capacity limitations of different resources taken into consideration.

Order backlog and other required parametres are entered in the simulation software. The user can alter e.g the work queue or the capacity of the resources if he wishes. The software presents the simulation results graphically, e.g. with utilisation rate graphs or gant graphs. In addition, a production program optimised with the tool can be printed out as a complete work order for the production line.

Benefits

The plate line simulation tool can be used e.g. to inspect:

  • An implementable production program with the current work load
  • Implementability of different kinds of production programs and their effects on production capacity
  • How does the production capacity change with different amount of resources
  • The effect of surprising elements, suchs as new orders, on the success of a planned production program
  • The degree of load on available resources with different production programs
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