The Graphical Line Designer Workbench offers an integrated user interface for performing product synchronizations. This workbench enables the automatic creation of standard processes, standard events, and standard operations by using defaulted information. The features in the Graphical Line Designer Workbench include:
Ability to drag and drop icons onto a canvas to add processes, events and line operations to the item routing
Processes, events, and line operations added to a routing are also automatically added to the line as a standard entity
Routing calculations are automatically performed every time a change is made to the routing
Information fields for Quality, value added, and process efficiency
Ease of use features for drawing size changes, and graphical view of network planning percentage connections under 100 percent
Events, Processes, and Line Operations
Events represent the detailed work content of your line. You can assign resources and time to events.
Processes are generally logical groupings of events that represent what is being done on the shop floor before going to flow. They can equal the discrete routing operations (assembly, welding, machining, test, and so forth). They can also be at an even lower level than that - especially in an assembly environment (assemble fan, add engine, inspect welds, and so forth). You may want to define processes first to give you a chance to take a look at the balance of your shop before moving to flow, using the Mixed Model Map Workbench. It gives you a starting point to divide or group work to equal takt. You are not required to define processes.
Operations are balanced groupings of events, and represent the workstations on your flow line. They may be more detailed than processes such as when one process is divided into several operations. Or, operations may be more generic such as when several processes are grouped into a single operation. This may be the case in a low volume assembly shop. Operations must be defined in order to be able to scrap assemblies through work order-less completions, to use the flow workstation, and to perform feeder line synchronization.