Assembly System Design Principles and Tradeoffs

This paper develops an analytical model to evaluate serial and parallel designs for an assembly system. The purpose is to identify when each design is cost-effective, using minimal data. The analysis shows that the design alternatives are based on a trade-off between labour and equipment utilization. Equations are derived for a simple system to illustrate this trade-off. Results indicate that the optimal trade-off depends simply on the ratio of labour to equipment costs. The trade-off analysis provides a first step towards establishing basic principles for assembly system design.