Date of Award
2026-08-01
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Engineering
Advisor(s)
Amit J. Lopes
Abstract
Identifying bottlenecks in a production line is rarely as easy as pointing to the slowest station and assuming that's where the problem is. The real question is which stations moves the system when you change them. Lean manufacturing has been one of the initiatives that major companies in the U.S. have been trying to adopt to remain competitive. This thesis aims to understand the results of applying a combination of a Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) with a Value Stream Mapping (VSM), to find the bottleneck of a continuous one-piece flow assembly line of a tier-1 power management manufacturer from the El Paso-Juarez region. First, a current state VSM was generated, and the sources of bottleneck were identified. Next, a DES model was built in FlexSim with a triangular (Min, Mode, Max) cycle-time distribution from the VSM. The data obtained by the VSM, was used to develop the current-state layout of the line in FlexSim. Afterwards, a verification and validation against the current state was made, followed up by a two-sided sensitivity analysis with baseline calibrated increments and stopping across the four sections of the line. The results confirmed that the system throughput responded only at the INT section, rising from a baseline of 356 to 416 units under progressive cycle-time reductions. The results of the remaining stations were almost flat, going from 354 to 357 units. These did not represent an impact on the system. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the stations with the highest blocking percentages happened to a downstream constraint rather than a limitation of their own. This finding reaffirms that a VSM alone could not provide us with that type of insight, which reassures that the hybrid VSM-DES methodology can transform a static map into a verified and quantified bottleneck identification, providing the necessary evidence for a to-be scenario.
Language
en
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
Copyright Date
2026-08
File Size
94 p.
File Format
application/pdf
Rights Holder
Ana Sofia Rey Nevarez
Recommended Citation
Rey Nevarez, Ana Sofia, "A Hybrid VSM-DES Approach for Bottleneck Identification and Reduction in a Continous One-Piece Flow Assembly System" (2026). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 4775.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd/4775