Comparison of Bucket Brigades and Working Balance Types of Lean Cellular Production

The cellular production organization enables the elimination of seven types of Lean process wastes: transport, inventory, unnecessary movements, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing, and defects. This paper presents the basic principles of lean production, focusing on different types of cellular production organization models. Bucket Brigades (BB) and Working Balance (WB) types of cellular production are most commonly used in the assembly processes. Simulations and tests for BB and WB types are performed while monitoring efficiency for different numbers of operators. The goal was to demonstrate and test the hypothesis of the BBmodel’s superiority in conditions of uncertainty and frequent changes due to the fluctuation of the workforce and required capacities. To establish BB and WB types of cellular organization, the time standardization of each operator by operation was carried out. The simulations were preceded by operator training to eliminate the effect of the learning curve on the results. Starting differences in the times of individual operators were up to 156%.The results showed that Bucket Brigades is a superior and more robust model that provides higher productivity. Even in some specific cases, productivity is higher up to 89,5% compared to the Working Balance concept. In addition, social loafing described by the Ringelmann effect was noticed and presented in the work.