Colloquium announcement

Faculty of Engineering Technology

Department Design, Production and Management
Master programme Mechanical Engineering

As part of his / her master assignment

Veen, A.P. van der (Auke)

will hold a speech entitled:

Designing an automated chemical line for a production company by using Discrete Event Simulation

Date26-05-2021
Time14:30
RoomTeams

Summary

Aeronamic manufactures and services subsystems and components for the competitive aerospace industry. Prices are constantly under pressure and thus an increase in productivity is needed to stay competitive.

Various wet chemical processes like alkaline cleaning, phosphating, or etching, are performed at Aeronamic. These chemical processes are executed at different locations throughout the factory, so there are multiple chemical lines with specific chemical baths. Process operators transfer products between the chemical baths by means of a manual operated crane. Productivity is lost since process operators need to walk between different locations and by manually operating a crane. Therefore a new chemical line is wanted, the Chemical Arena. This new chemical line should be able to handle all 29 different processes at one location, further it should transfer parts between the chemical baths with an automated crane in order to increase the productivity.

The assignment for this thesis was to find the ideal layout and configuration for the new chemical line. Multiple layouts and configurations were analysed and optimized by means of a Discrete Event Simulation. The different layouts were simulated for two different production volume scenarios, a minimum and maximum scenario; the 29 different chemical processes were added in the simulation model. Eventually a layout with two rows of chemical baths showed to be a good and feasible solution for Aeronamic, in which parts mostly followed an U-Turn flow path through the Chemical Arena. It was found that the Chemical Arena could handle all 29 different chemical processes for both production volume scenarios within a waiting time equal or less than 4 hours.

It was found that it is possible to analyse and design an automated chemical line by using Discrete Event Simulation. It is likely that the used simulation model can be used for designing and analysing other automated chemical lines as well.