Carlex Glass Laminated Side Glass Process Optimization

The intent of this project is to determine how many racks of glass should be inserted into the autoclave at a given time in order to maximize productivity of the Laminated Side Glass line. Based on this value, the total number of workers necessary at finishing and the cycle time of the bag furnace were determined. This was achieved by building a model of the line in Arena and analyzing it. The model demonstrated that twelve is the optimal number of racks to insert at a given time, only one team of two workers is necessary per shift, and that the optimal bag furnace cycle time is 18 seconds. This optimization allows for an increase in profitability of over $16,000 per month and also increases utilization of human workers at finishing by more than 10%