Optimization of Manufacturing Process Parameters Using Arena Simulation and Taguchi Method
Vignesh Shanmugam Sankaran1,
Venkataramanan Segar1,
Balamurugan Subramanian2, and
Ashok Krishna3
1.Department of Mechanical Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore 641004, India
2.Department of Mechanical Engineering, SRM University, Chennai 603203, India
3.School of Mechanical and Building Sciences, VIT University, Vellore 632014, India
Abstract—This article presents a study in which an attempt has been made to figure out the optimal arrival
parameters to reduce the cost of manufacturing submersible pumps. It mainly focuses on the
idea to find the significance of arrival parameters such as entities per arrival, assembly batch
size and inter arrival time on the response called cost of manufacturing. A proper combination of
these factors must be established so as to get reduced manufacturing cost using the Taguchi
method. The manufacturing cost for trial runswas obtained using ARENA simulation using data
collection from a pump manufacturing industry. Mixed level design was considered with 4-level
design for inter-arrival time and 2-level design for other two factors. Least manufacturing cost of
INR 1046 was deduced with optimum combination of inter-arrival time of 5 min, entity per arrival
of 1 and assembly batch size of 3. Another objective was to find significance of factors affecting
the manufacturing cost. It was found that inter arrival time highly affects manufacturing cost.
Thus significant factors along with their optimum combination were found using Taguchi
techniques to arrive at the least manufacturing cost.
Index Terms—Taguchi, Optimization, ARENA, Manufacturing cost, Simulation
Cite: Vignesh Shanmugam Sankaran, Venkataramanan Segar, Balamurugan Subramanian, and Ashok Krishna, "Optimization of Manufacturing Process Parameters Using Arena Simulation and Taguchi Method," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 435-444, January 2015.
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