Analyzing the Effects of Cell Related Factors and Takt Time on the Performance of Lean Interim Cells

Cells formed in the early steps of lean transformation called interim cells and their performance is so important because these are the first actions to make the production operations lean. In this study, human related factors which play an important role in demonstrating performance of lean cells have been studied in term of dynamic assignment interval along with cell related factors including cell size and type of dominant tasks in the cell. Takt time is considered as the factor related to customer influencing the performance of the cell. First, the mathematical model of research developed based on dynamic assignment and incorporating impressionability of operator's performance by the manner in which tasks assigned to him during several rotation periods. The model structured as the combination of balancing, sequencing and dynamic assignment models. Then, some experiments designed using Taguchi's approach and data as near optimal solutions gathered by running VNS algorithm on the model. After that, the effect of factors tested by applying ANOVA and MANOVA. The results shown that the impressionability of lean cell is a complex matter.so the number of dynamic assignments vesus various combination of factors have been proposed.