Study of the impact of production quantity loaded to a production line on apparel production system performance using simulation

In apparel manufacturing process, one of the functions in production planning process is to define the production quantity to be loaded to the production line. It involves splitting customer order into lots of different sizes before it is loaded. The splitting decision is mainly based on the primary concerns of avoiding late delivery and making the most out of the production capacity; it has received minimal attention from both industry and academic research. In this paper, computer simulation method is used to explore the impact of different lot sizes to be loaded in production lines and its interaction with operator competence on production system performance. The simulation results confirm the significant effect of production quantity to be loaded to the production line and its interaction effect with operator competence on all performance measures.