How can I design a production line? Or at least find resources about how to design a production line.

I know that this is a very broad subject but I'm mechanical engineering student and I would like to learn how to design a production line. If I have to choose I would like to learn how to design a paper making production line. I've scoured the internet for resources. And I've downloaded a lot of books. But I wish there were more drawings or diagrams of a production line or of the machine in the production line. Does anybody have any resources or knowledge that they can share? If you have knowledge about any sort of assembly or production line please share.

1 Answer

Shooting from the hip here as a product designer, maybe start with clearly identifying your deliverable. Is it cut paper? Roll paper? How much do you want the line to be able to make? Questions like that.

Once that's done, identify the machinery and operations necessary to produce that deliverable, from start to finish, and then you can start a rough layout because these machines and operations need to happen in a certain order.

Volume paper production equipment to me sounds like high precision stuff so the placement of the machinery will tend to design itself since things have to line up precisely from one machine to the next.

Hand crafted artisan paper would have much "looser" location requirements from step to step, and probably allow a bit more flexibility in machine and operation placement, but the general idea is the same for all assembly lines I suppose.

Define the deliverable, define the steps necessary to produce that deliverable, then do the line layout. It should tend to "lay itself out" more or less once the first two steps are done.

I find part design often happens in much the same way. Once the requirements and the constraints are defined, stuff just kind of designs itself! Weird!