Industry 4.0 elements and analytics for garment assembly production lines

Abstract

The world is now witnessing the 4th industrial revolution technology and this is commonly known as Industry 4.0. This study focuses on developing a prototype to demonstrate the smart production line by using Industry 4.0 elements for apparel manufacturing which captures the cycle times of garment assembly operations and balance workloads. As the key elements. Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing and Big data were involved to convert a traditional assembly line to a smart assembly line. The developed prototype allows to capture cycle times of operations and sends those data to a cloud through a wireless network. The data stored in the cloud compute the required arithmetic to draw Yamazumi work balance chart which is dynamically updated without human intervention. A computer client application attached to the cloud act as a decision support system which helps production management to make decisions efficiently. As the special features, the proposed system is also compatible with walking worker production lines where operators are moving from one workstation to another, which also captures actual utilization of the worker at different workstations along the production line which is harder to capture accurately in the actual production scenario.