Socio Economic Impact of Assembly Line Balancing in Garment Manufacturing with the Help of Work Aids

The experimental efficacy of a work station that is ergonomically designed owes its overall reliance on production engineering, especially considering assembly line balancing besides the sustained work output of the assembly line and its snags caused in the production process have been acknowledged since long. The manifestation of these irregularities and consequent inadequacies on persistent shoulder – neck exposure have been studied for this paper with the help of work aids. A conducive workplace based on better ergonomic work station design, influences stress decreased due to the undue strain of repeated actions in an assembly line situation. This makes for resultant assembly line need to get balanced and subsequent to the production most irregularities decrease. It also results in the perpetuation of idle time across the assembly line outputs as compared to when no work aids have been introduced. Focus The researcher contribution of this paper is the experimentation conducted on a work table designed for the finishing line segment of the garment manufacturing assembly line. The folding table, as it has been called has flexibility of adjustment of work angle and some advantages over the conventional fixed surface tables. Method Designing aspect apart this Table has been experimented with for usage and stability in the garment manufacturing assembling at three different units. The pilot results have been examined in the light of work done by earlier scholars. Scope The musculoskeletal strain experienced by workers in the garment manufacturing units impacts directly on their work output resulting long term physical and socio-economic implications that tend to effect work output efficiency in the long run. Results and Findings Decreased stress levels show indications of positive usage of this work aid. However, testing is still going on to confirm the preliminary results