The improvement of line balancing in the plastic sack production using theory of constraints

This research was conducted in a plastic sack production that is used to package rice or fertilizer. Problems faced by the company are the built-up of work in process and the imbalance of the production line. The research objective is to increase line efficiency of the production process. The stopwatch time study method is used in measuring the time of each element of the task to get the standard working time. Then backward and forward scheduling and line balancing are performed. On the existing line, there are 11 work centres with 11 workers, a smoothing index of 27,813.68 and a line efficiency of 19.42%. The results of balancing the production line using the theory of constraints obtained the best alternative for 11 workers is to form 7 work centres with a smoothing index value of 4,205.41 and a line efficiency of 55.08%. If it is possible to only employ 10 people, the line efficiency can be increased to 64.26% with a smoothness index of 3,142.94.