Dongfeng-Nissan, General Motors (Shanghai GM), Motorola, AMD China and Flextronics China are among manufacturers in China claiming improvements from Lanner's Witness process simulation solution. Zhou Baoyuan, IE engineer at Shanghai GM DongYue Powertrain, makes the point that, as the global economic slowdown in the west continues to bite, process simulation is increasingly being recognised as an approach that delivers vast productivity gains and efficiency savings.
"Our goal is to maintain the same level of output on our car engine assembly line while reducing costs. Prior to using witness, we used our own judgements and experiences to make adjustments to variables in the production line. This approach lacked precision as random events, such as machine breakdown and subsequent changing of scheduling to the assembly line, could not be factored in," says Baoyuan.
And he adds: "Lanner's Witness provides us with a better way of mapping and optimising processes, through simulating the assembly line and machine line running, according to various scenarios. Through using Witness we have successfully reduced our WIP by 20% and reduced machine line re-setup time by 60 minutes."
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