Door and Window Mechanisms

The metal and plastics related parts for door and window mechanisms usually consist of tilt, turn, sash, slide and lock systems. These products themselves consist of a large number of small metal and plastic parts assembled together. The main problem of manufacturing in this industry is to deliver orders on time while minimizing the lost time due to changeovers and ensuring that different parts arrive to assembly stations simultaneously without maintaining a high level of work-in- process inventory. The definition of the problem implies that a factory operations scheduling solution may provide important benefits for this industry.

The metal parts are manufactured through pressing and pressing is sometimes followed by coating processes whereas the plastic parts are manufactured through injection molding as usual. The system must be able to handle many different operational limitations such as the availability of molds and dies, the number of teams available for changeovers which may change depending on the shift and affects the number of possible changeovers to be executed simultaneously, the number of operators available which affects the number of machines that can be run simultaneously, minimum lot quantities and raw material availability.

The assembly process is either executed by automated assembly workstations or assembly lines. While for this type of assembly process, changeover times are mostly non-existent, costly losses may be incurred if different parts of a product do not arrive to the assembly process simultaneously. Hence, the factory operations scheduling system must be able to ensure simultaneous arrival of parts to be assembled together.

Due to the complex nature of the factory operations scheduling, sometimes it may be difficult to understand the implications of a given plan. NovaLab’s planning software, xS Planner, provides interactive raw material requirements plan view with the help of an embedded MRP module in addition to warnings related to various aspects of the plan such as late orders and a dashboard for KPIs.