Simulation of a Kitting System for the Replenishment of an Automotive Assembly Line

Automotive market expectations tend increasingly to the vehicles’ customisation. Consequently, automotive plants manufacture several vehicle models on the same assembly line, which generates major internal logistics challenges. The existing literature reports the use of simulation for the design and planning of warehouse logistics, for production optimisation and for scheduling optimisation in flexible production lines. However, there are few works using simulation for internal logistics problems in the automotive industry. This article presents a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model for the internal logistics in an automotive assembly plant from Renault Group. The proposed model is divided into three stages: the part supply to the kitting area, the kit preparation and the kit delivery to the door assembly area. The model is validated for stage one. A real case study is presented, aiming to determine the number of AGV tractors needed to change the production rate from 30 to 60 vehicles per hour. Simulations of the supply process are carried out with two and five AGV tractors in the circuit (i) with and (ii) without sharing an aisle of the production site. The results show that at least 6 AGVs are needed in the circuit or a modification in the process must be made to achieve the target production rate of 60 vehicles per hour. The case of sharing an aisle in a production site shows the importance of integrating resource sharing constraints in the DES modelling of complex systems. Future work will focus on the use of the implemented DES model as decision-support tool for the optimisation of the logistic process.