Production capacity improvement of hood production line based on the theory of constraints

In the automobile manufacturing industry, enterprises have carried out numerous explorations to achieve the effect of reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Among them, the modification of the production line to improve the production capacity has been adopted by more and more enterprises and those enterprises got good results. This paper focuses on improvement of capacity in the hood line in Bodyshop, by identifying the bottleneck position of the production line based on the Theory of Constraints (TOC), and conducting cycle time analysis. To find the potential points for optimization, the process of the production is decomposed with the help of Image Action Analysis and ECRS principle (Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, Simplify). Then the modification started from four aspects: optimization of robot trajectory, optimization of equipment parameter, optimization of equipment motion sequence and optimization of process, which reduced the cycle time of the production line, increased the production capacity, and solved the problem of insufficiency of the capacity. Meanwhile, this solution is a good case for other production shops.