David Rader
Line Balancing
The leveling of a workload in manufacturing is called line balancing. The most common place uses line
balancing is the clothing industry. Clothing is mass produced in lines or a set of machines (Sakar, 2013.)
A line is made up of multiple workstations with various duties. Some of these functions range from
sewing to packing the finished product.
In an assembly line production varies per hour. The various times is based on the particular operation,
the skill of the operator, and machine capacity (Sakar, 2013.) When a workstation has little activities,
this is considered a bottleneck. Bottlenecks are when one or more stations are producing faster
(Nichols, 2017.) Therefore, when there is a slowdown in output, the line is considered a bottleneck. It is
why it is vital to increase production of the bottleneck processes.
Line balancing becomes essential to increase bottleneck operations. Production costs can increase
when not using the excess capacity. Also, line balancing ensures all staff on a line is not overburdened.
To ensure the efficiency of the line and overcome the bottleneck, a business uses line balancing.
When using line balancing, there are multiple calculations needed. Various data needs collecting when
using the method. Through the data and calculations, the answers are found and implemented to
increase the efficiency of an assembly line.
