Simulation for Jewelry Production Process Improvement Using Line Balancing: A Case Study

Thai jewelry is the world’s leading jewelry which has gained high reputation and recognition from customers worldwide. In the past decade, jewelry have become one of the top ten export product of Thailand with the current export value of around 58,000 million baht per year which is 3.4 percent of all Thailand export products. Due to the high competition in the world market, however, Thai jewelry manufacturers needs to continue to improve their product quality as well as process efficiency in order to gain more market share. Currently, computer-aided tools have become more powerful tool in jewelry production management. They have been used to design production process, plant and workstation layout, production planning, worker’s scheduling, and other decisive decision making in both high management and shop floor levels. This research demonstrates a case study of plant simulation application for jewelry production process improvement. The objective is to reduce bottlenecks and increase productivity in wax pattern and casting processes using line balancing. Various scenarios have been proposed in order to support different level of desired output rate due to the increase of demand. The results of line balancing and simulation models reduce bottlenecks. Hence, productivity is increased. The desired throughput rates are achieved with the minimum number of workers and machine in the system.