The eFlex Assembly Process Engineering Tool is a planning and simulation environment to manage everything that impacts your manufacturing assembly line including time estimation, production line balancing, fastener loading, ergonomics, simulation and value stream mapping. The Process Engineering Tool empowers process and industrial engineers to completely balance an assembly line or sub-system by allowing them to:

• Calculate process efficiency, operator loading, expected cycle time and other factors.
• Attach files to operations such as job instructions, process charts, process validation videos, etc.
• Use a standard database with standard element times.

What Does It Do?

There are many different tasks accomplished using the eFlex Assembly process engineering tool, including:

1. Allows for Process or Industrial Engineers to balance an assembly line or sub-system (“Configuration” instead of “Programming”)
2. Rapid Estimating and Methods Improvements  analysis.
3. Process modelers estimate assembly speed, payload, and cycle time given production demand, product dimensions, and process parameters.
4. Engineering knowledge database correlates product designs to assembly methods. This database will enable automatic generation of assembly line balance models. The results from the process modeler will also be stored in this database. User are allowed to update this database and an adaptive query algorithm is built in.
5. System performance simulation module facilitates optimization. Users may specify assembly layout, material flow, cycle time, and reliability data to evaluate the throughput based on an analytical solution that is completely open.
6. Bulit in optimization tools integrate all elements of the Process Engineering Tool. The outputs of process modelers and simulation module builds multiple objectives for assembly optimization. Engineering database provides constraints. The output can be optimal layout, equipment selection, parameter design, task assignment to equipments etc. given designs of product families. The innovations of this module are: (1) multi-objective optimization for simultaneous selection of layout, equipment, parameters, and assembly processes/sequences. (2) Development of systems with hybrid layouts (serial-parallel configurations) for multiple product families.

Why Do You Need It?

Traditionally, process re-engineering is not considered an efficient task because of the time and money involved if a proper tool is not available, and insufficient data which leads to problems after the assembly line is re-configured.

Accurate Data

Using the eFlex Assembly Process Engineering Tool, a full history is available for you to conduct any studies you need. It allows you to configure the changes suggested by your process engineers.

Saves Time and Money

If anything goes wrong, the functioning of the assembly line can be moved back to the original configuration within a few hours. This leaves more room for the process engineer to work on the assembly line and carry out tests without actually stopping the production or waiting days for a control systems engineer to re-configure the assembly line according to the changes suggested.