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1. Introduction
In the automotive industry, a new body shop produc-
tion-line needs to be set up for almost every new car Within the car body shop of an automotive plant, the
model. Due to the relatively short product life cycles, body-in-white is assembled from pre-formed pieces of
metal. Here, up to one hundred or even more welding
the planning process of body shops can almost be re-
robots and various other equipment are needed to
garded as continuous. A main problem is to find an
complete the body-in-white before it is conveyed to
efficient layout fulfilling the desired production rate
the next step of the production process. Since the
which is characterized by small buffer sizes and body-in-white of a new model is typically signifi-
optimized cycle times. Often, the optimization of a cantly different from the previous type of car, manu-
new body shop is carried out manually, possibly sup- facturers have to design a new body shop for almost
ported by a simulation model to analyze the impact of each new model. At the same time, product life cycles
different cycle times and buffer sizes. In this paper, we in the automotive industry become continuously
present a mathematical formulation and an automated shorter and the investments for the equipment some-
optimization approach for this planning problem. The times exceed one hundred million dollars. Of course,
optimization modules, which have a direct interface to the amount of money spent on equipment mainly de-
the underlying simulation model, are based on pends on the flexibility of the overall manufacturing
metaheuristics, such as genetic algorithms and simu- system, but both the efficiency of such planning pro-
lated annealing. Here, the main task lies in comparing cesses and the quality of the final design are also es-
the manual body-in-white configuration with metaheu- sential for a companys success.
ristic-based optimization approaches. For an evaluation In the early conceptual design, being among the
of the potentials of our approach, a case study was car- first steps of the planning processes, the shop is di-
vided into 12 to 18 different blocks, each representing
ried out in collaboration with a German car manu-
a welding area covering numerous welding opera-
facturer.
tions in different stations. To decouple the production
process, buffers are usually introduced between two
Keywords: Body shop design, automotive indus- subsequent blocks forming a structure of blocks and
try, simulation-based optimization, genetic algo- buffers. Here, a converting topology can be observed,
rithms, simulated annealing
Rear
Compartment
Underbody Underbody Paint MIG- Brazing/ Finish
Framing Bar Welding
Line 1 Line 2 Grinding
Floor Panel
Carrier System
Side Frame
(Left)
as the assemblies and subassemblies coming from cer- may provide better results, even though it is difficult
tain blocks meet in succeeding areas. For instance, the to find applications of simulation-based optimization
car underbody, the roof and the side frames are as- in the automotive industry in the related literature [5].
sembled in a so-called framing line. The structure of But the successful application of simulation-based
the body shop considered in the case study is shown optimization to other real world problems, along with
in Figure 1. the availability of commercial packages, has led to the
Over the last couple of years it has become state-of- idea of adapting these methods for the automotive
the-art to support the early stages of the conceptual body shop design problem. The aim of this paper is to
design with simulation models using commercial test and evaluate the combination of body shop simu-
tools like Automod, SIMPLE++, or Witness [1-4]. The lation models and modern optimization methods, es-
optimization of buffer sizes and cycle times, while pecially metaheuristics as genetic algorithms and
maintaining a demanded production rate of the body simulated annealing.
shop, are well-known applications of discrete event To exemplify the potentials of our approach, a com-
simulation studies [3]. However, simulation does not prehensive case study has been undertaken at the
improve a given solution by itself. Instead, it can only BMW AG, Munich. Here, existing simulation models
be regarded as an efficient tool to analyze a given of an already manually planned body shop were com-
solution. bined with two available optimization packages of-
Concerning the optimization of a body shop con- fered by vendors of simulation tools, the Witness-
cept, two parameters describing each block are of in- Optimizer (a simulated annealing-tool) by Lanner
terest: the cycle time, i.e., the time for completing one Group and SIMPLE/GA (a genetic algorithm-compo-
cycle of operations within the block, and the availabil- nent) by Tecnomatix.
ity of the block. Note that achieving long cycle times In the following section, we discuss the body shop
and maintaining a desired production rate is impor- design problem in greater detail. Then, we present
tant for the next step within the planning process, our approach of combining metaheuristics and simu-
where the blocks are designed in detail and relatively lation models, as it has been developed and tested for
long cycle times may allow a reduction of necessary the presented case study at BMW. Here, we also give
resources, e.g., the number of robots used for the a short review of similar models and metaheuristic-
same activities. based solution procedures proposed in the literature.
The search for a good solution (good in terms of In Section 4, we discuss the experiments performed
small buffers and long cycle times) is usually con- and some computational results. Section 5 provides
ducted manually starting with solutions based on some conclusions and directions for further research.
analytical calculations and experiences of the plan-
ning engineers. Subsequently, these solutions are it- 2. Problem Description
eratively improved by changing buffer sizes and cycle The production of a body-in-white follows a scheme
times systematically and conducting a simulation ex- that is almost the same throughout the automotive
periment for each set of parameters. However, the industry. The main steps of the production process
growing number of concept studies puts a constant differ only slightly between different manufacturers
pressure on all car manufacturers to increase the qual- and car models. Generally, a given number m of
ity and the efficiency of the planning processes. In this blocks are part of the body shop concept, where
context, the automation of this optimization process manual labor and robot processes are organized. Af-
400
??
350
300
250 daily
production
200 rate
150
100
50
1 0
2
3 10
4 9
8
5 7
6 6
size of buffer 1 7 5 size of buffer 2
8 4
9 3
2
10 1
a population of individuals that are combined to cre- of a microwave oven production system, or to opti-
ate new, hopefully better solutions, only one solution mize a flexible assembly cell with an accumulating
is considered at each iteration. This solution is transfer system [20-21,9]. Similar approaches concen-
changed locally. After each computation of a new so- trate on evolutionary algorithms and an extension of a
lution, it is decided whether the new solution should polyeder approach (so-called complex strategy) to im-
be accepted, even if the solution quality is worse than prove a large scale assembly line [22], or even a com-
the one of the original solution. The probability for bination of these two metaheuristics in a simulation
accepting worse solutions is based on the time the al- model of a chemical plant [23]. Additionally, some
gorithm has been processing (using a cooling table), work has been conducted to optimize production sys-
thereby expecting a convergence to a global optimum. tems with similar characteristics to a body shop (ma-
Combined with a simulation model, GAs have been chinery with random breakdowns and buffers to de-
applied to optimize, e.g., the production rate of a couple the machines) using simulation and
board manufacturing process at a Hewlett Packard (approximative) analytical methods [24-25], or to ex-
plant [13]. The system consists of 21 coupled blocks ploit other metaheuristics for simulation-based opti-
with some of them working in parallel. A mix of 6 to mization [27-29].
14 different types of boards is produced and some The interaction between any optimization module
types do not have to be operated in all blocks. The and a simulation model can be described as an itera-
cycle times of three within the 21 blocks have been tive process: Each solution computed by the op-
optimized with each cycle time having a range of 32 timization module is passed to a control module
different values. GAs find the global optimum that within the simulation model, e.g., a simple text file
was previously calculated using complete enumera- using a file interface of the simulation package used.
tion within 15 generations of 30 individuals. This control module sets the model parameters ac-
Similar experiences in the field of simulation-based cording to the data represented in the solution and
optimization have been obtained, e.g., for generic pro- starts the simulation run. After the simulation run is
duction systems [15], a bicycle plant [16], industrial finished, a second control is invoked that calculates
robots [17], as well as automated guided vehicles [18]. the fitness of the individual or the solution quality,
Other studies consider a combination of discrete respectively, by examining the experimental results.
event simulation and altered GAs, e.g., a hybrid GA Based on these results, the next iteration is carried out
to tackle production planning problems [19] and di- by the optimization module under consideration.
verse evolutionary algorithms to optimize a simple In order to evaluate the solution quality, a function
sample inventory system, to minimize the inventory is needed that represents the objectives of the BSDP as
14.00
13.00
moving averages (w = 10)
12.00
11.00
10.00
9.00
8.00
7.00
6.00
5.00
4.00
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75
700
CPU time (sec)
1.40%
confidence interval
600
1.20%
500
1.00%
0.82% 400
0.80%
300
0.60%
0.40% 200
233
0.20% 85 0.40% 100
0.00% 0
1 6 11 16 21 26 31 36 41 46
simulation period (days)
confidence interval half-length/means
CPU time
120.0%
101.2% 101.4% 101.6%
100.0%
79.7%
80.0% 73.6% 75.0% 71.5%
67.0%
60.0% 52.8%
40.0%
20.0%
0.0%
SGA WSA PGA
Figure 7. Relative buffer sizes, relative cycle time and relative deviation of cycle
times compared to the best manual solution
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
fitness
1000
800
600
400
200
0
generation