One of the best methods to deliver your costumers’ demand is to use manufacturing or machining cells to produce in large scale with a high product mix. To maximize production and serve the demand, the challenge is to balance labors and manufacturing capability. As the system can be very complex, one approach is to simulate the whole system and observe how it behaves, monitoring cell’s cycle time, the workflow and the WIP inventory. Then it is possible to find out if the current cycle time attends our current customers’ demand. The main purpose of this paper is to simulate, by using the digital twin software Flexsim, a gear machining cell from a global technology company, located in Sao Paulo, Brazil, that supplies systems for light vehicles.

Keywords

Simulation, productivity, flow, improvement, WIP.