Case Study: GM increases throughput by 5% with SIMUL8

GM reconfigures maintenance rules to increase throughput by 5% using SIMUL8

General Motors (GM) Holden, a subsidiary of GM and Australia's largest automotive company, faced the challenge of increasing production throughput to meet rising demand without adding to their costs. To achieve this flexibility in their complex, multi-body style assembly line, they turned to SIMUL8 simulation software from the vendor SIMUL8.

Using SIMUL8, GM experimented with different maintenance rules in a risk-free virtual environment. The solution involved redistributing maintenance resources to critical bottleneck areas. A key discovery was that removing two excess system carriers actually increased line capacity. This approach, implemented with SIMUL8, resulted in a 5% increase in throughput, allowed the company to avoid hiring new production workers, and provided the flexibility to scale production based on demand.

GM

Joy Boath

Virtual Manufacturing Engineer