Authors: Antonio Cimino, Francesco Longo, Giovanni Mirabelli, Enrico Papoff
The starting point of the research work is the actual configuration of a workstation (Pressure test workstation) belonging to a manufacturing system operating in the field of idraulic hoses production. The objective of the paper is twofold. From one side it aims at comparing four different work methods for optimizing the workstation productivity. Note that the comparison is accomplished according to the work methods process time. From the other side the authors aim at comparing two different work measurement methods trying to establish the more efficient one. Note that the work measurement methods are used for calculating the work methods process time. Moreover, the authors adopt a Modeling & Simulation (M&S) based approach for implementing a three dimensional environnment capable of recreating the Pressure test workstation with satisfactory accuracy. It allows the researchers to conduct the simulation study without disturbing the real system.