Formulation of a novel production line monitoring technique

Despite the effectiveness of current developments in modern computerised manufacturing, little attention has been paid to monitoring the material transfer system (e.g. conveyor), which covers most malfunctions in practice and greatly affects production efficiency. The proposed methodology observes the characteristics of flow components using time-stamped counting devices for monitoring purposes. The simulation results showed that blocking in a production line could be timely diagnosed. It is anticipated that the proposed research could contribute to the development of new production monitoring philosophy and potentially, its applications can also be extended to other material transportation systems.