Assignment: Assembly Line

This week you are going to design and balance an assembly line. We are going to take the simple task of making cupcakes, break the work up into stations, calculate cycle times for each station, balance the work load between stations, and calculate the efficiency of the operation.

The steps for the assignment are below.

Design an assembly line to manufacture cupcakes from scratch.

Balance the assembly line.

Measure the efficiency

Assignment format:

The best way to do this is in Excel. You can use cell borders and insert shapes to build the assembly line. Use the math functions in Excel to balance your line and calculate efficiencies.

The final report should be in Word in APA format. Use the following sections:

Introduction – how you set up the line, what is done at each station and cycle time.

You can cut and paste in your diagram from Excel

Line Balance – what you did to balance the line, you can copy in your Excel work if

needed.

Efficiency – provide and analyze the operational efficiency.