A case study of the body shop design in an automotive factory using 3D simulation

Abstract

There are five major shops in an automotive factory, namely, press shop, body shop, power train shop, paint shop, and trim shop (general assembly shop). When an automotive factory develops a new car model, new production lines should be constructed at the same time, and the body shop especially needs to be entirely rebuilt whenever a new car model is developed. The body shop is a typical example of the flow shop (or transfer line). Many parts are assembled together in the body shop by various welding operations. Therefore, the cycle time of each robot and the buffer size between two sub-lines should be determined in the design phase of the body shop. This paper explains a case study of a body shop design using 3D simulation in a Korean automotive factory. 3D simulation is useful in verifying if the factory design would meet the production quantity target. It also helps in understanding the structure of the factory. QUEST®, IGRIP®, and Factory-CAD® are used for the 3D simulation model.