Abstract
The purpose of the research is to provide an example to analyze process performance for system assembly lines of notebook computer plants. Data is collected from four major manufacturers in Taiwan by questionnaire and interviews. The cumulative production volume of these manufacturers is about 68﹪of Taiwan’s total notebook production in 2000. The contributions include: 1) refining a manufacturing management model for system assembly line; 2) benchmarking performance indices in system assembly line; 3) inefficiency analysis for the four plants; 4) providing improvement suggestions; 5) using simulation method to simulate and evaluate the benefits after the process improvement. The proposed generic improvements include reducing the number of process segments, reducing the amount of inter segment transportation, reducing inter segment transportation time, reducing the number of WIP, using continuous and circular layout in system assembly line, increasing the line balance rate of the production line, increasing the yield rate of production, and parallelize LCD assembly and mainboard assembly in one production line etc. Simulation indicated that substential improvements can be gained if the recommendation are adopted.