Abstract
In footwear manufacturing, a typical production line can be separated into three production areas: cutting/preparation, stitching and assembling, according to the sequence of manufacturing process. Between cutting/preparation and stitching as well as between stitching and assembling, Work-in-process (WIP) level setting, transportation batch size and transportation frequency are three critical control factors affecting the production efficiency. However, it is difficult to optimally determine these three control factors due to multiple levels of each factor and the interactions among these factors. Therefore, factory managers tend to set these factors based on experiences. This study aims to build up a representative simulation model in footwear manufacturing and to investigate the effect of the control factors on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as pairs per man hour (PPMH), total WIP level, and cycle time. The development and validation of the model is done in cooperation with experts from a footwear factory making name brand shoes located in south China. The simulation results show that different combinations of different levels of these control factors lead to different KPI performance and the “optimal” combination of these factors is investigated on the basis of experimental design.