Video Transcript:
Proplanner's Line Balancing application, ProBalance, is the fastest and most accurate way to assign tasks, tools, and parts to stations within a mixed-model/option environment. ProBalance offers an easy-to-use, spreadsheet-driven interface that supports intuitive and sophisticated charting, flexible & quick line balancing, and comparative reporting.
In ProBalance you can define the product models made on your assembly line, the parts and components that make up those models, the tools and equipment available, and the existing stations set up on your line, they need to find the tasks required to complete your product assemblies.
As a part of this you indicate which models and options parts and tools are associated with each task. You can also define the ergonomic impact of each task on parts of the body such as the elbow, wrist, neck, or back with the user-defined scoring system.
Before creating a line balance you must also define your task precedence. You can begin with a straight line precedence but assessing each task and its absolute predecessors will allow for greater flexibility to move tasks around in the line balance to achieve desired cycle time results.
Using the information you provide ProBalance can create an automatic balance based on a few different inputs. If you need to meet a strict TAKT time to keep up with demand you can define that TAKT time and ProBalance will determine how many stations you need to meet it.
The peak model method will assign tasks to guarantee that no model will exceed the TAKT time. The weighted average method tells you that on average you will be able to keep up with a given tag time even though some models may require more or less time. If you have a limited number of stations available ProBalance can also determine the lowest TAKT time you can achieve.
ProBalance allows you to create multiple line balance scenarios for one line. so how do you know the differences between balances you've created? The scenario compare report evaluates the differences in the tasks, parts, and resources at each station. In the case that you are rebalancing an existing line, this report makes it easy to identify what needs to be added or removed from each station to achieve the new balance.
If you've performed an ergonomic assessment on each task ProBalance then allows you to assess the work at each station. You can decide to manually move some tasks to another station to spread out in this case the overhead tasks. This tool can also help with operator assignment if someone is especially prone to back injuries it may be crucial to assign them to a station that requires zero lifting for example.
Another factor to consider is whether each station has the capacity for all of the tools and parts needed to complete the assigned tasks. Looking at this balance the second station has exceeded the available space so some tests may need to be manually moved into one of the other stations which do have free space for the part search rules indicated by the green bar.
ProBalance can be distributed as a standalone package can be used in coordination with Proplanner's ProTime Estimation or it can be integrated into Proplanner's Assembly Planner especially in a mixed model environment ProBalance can play a vital role in meeting demand and making full use of all of your available resources.
