Considering Product Life Cycle Stages and Worker Skill Level in Seru Production Systems

Abstract The product life cycle (PLC) stages can be considered as introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Seru production systems has a potential to perform better where products have high demand variability and low volume during the introduction and decline stages. On the other hand, the assembly line is popular in the final processes of mass production systems due to its high efficiency, low product cost owing to economy of scale, and low labor cost by low-skilled workers. Therefore, an assembly line design is more successful for growth and maturity stages of a product where the demand is more stable. Likewise, if skill level of workers for different tasks have higher variation, assembly line can be considered as a better option. Hybrid system of assembly line and seru production system performs better with workers who have less skill variation. A worker is expected to improve his/her skill levels when performing a task continuously leading to seru production system with low skill level variation. Therefore, this study aims to introduce the details of a preliminary approach considering product life cycle stages and worker skill requirements.