Against the background of increasing cost pressure in the manufacturing industry, tricycle manufacturers have put forward higher requirements for the cost control capabilities of production lines. Recently, our company’s intelligent production line project designed and implemented for a tricycle manufacturing company has achieved remarkable results. By optimizing the production line layout and process design, we successfully achieved the goal of reducing the production cost of a single unit by more than 20%. The tricycle assembly line has incorporated cost control concepts into the planning and design stage. Through a comprehensive analysis of the original production process, we found that there are three main cost bottlenecks in the traditional production line: the long material transfer distance between processes leads to high logistics costs, and insufficient utilization of some workstations leads to waste of resources and high rework rates due to unstable processes. In response to these problems, we redesigned the overall layout of the production line. In the material flow process, we adopted a U-shaped production line layout instead of the traditional linear layout, shortening the average material handling distance between each process from the original 35 meters to 12 meters. At the same time, the production line is equipped with an intelligent material distribution system, which tracks the material position in real time through RFID technology, and automatically dispatches AGV cars for accurate distribution according to production progress. This improvement has reduced the number of logistics personnel by 40% and increased material turnover efficiency by 60%. In terms of equipment configuration, we accurately calculate the time of each process through time-action research, and adopt the equipment configuration plan of “one machine with multiple functions”. Key workstations are equipped with multi-functional machining centers, which can complete multiple processes such as milling, drilling, and tapping on the same equipment, reducing equipment investment and floor area. At the same time, the work rhythm of each process is optimized through production line balancing technology, increasing the comprehensive utilization rate of equipment from the original 65% to 85%. In the quality control process, 7 online inspection points are set up in the tricycle assembly line, and a machine vision system is used to monitor key size parameters in real time. When deviations are detected, the system will automatically adjust equipment parameters to avoid the generation of defective products from the source. This improvement has increased the one-time pass rate of products from 92% to 98%, and reduced the rework rate by 70%. It is worth mentioning that the tricycle assembly line has also introduced an energy management system to monitor the energy consumption of each equipment in real time. By optimizing equipment start-stop strategies and adopting high-efficiency and energy-saving motors, the overall energy consumption of the production line has been reduced by 25%. In terms of lighting systems, an intelligent lighting control system is used to automatically adjust the illuminance according to the actual needs of the production area, further reducing energy consumption. Since the tricycle assembly line was put into operation, it has been running stably for 6 months, and a total of more than 15,000 tricycles have been produced. Through comprehensive calculation, the production cost of a single unit is reduced by 22.3% compared with that before the transformation, and the investment return period is expected to be completed in more than one year. Customer feedback shows that the stability and reliability of the production line fully meet expectations, giving the company valuable cost advantage in the fierce market competition. In the future, we will continue to deepen research on cost control technology and plan to promote and apply this production line design solution that combines efficiency improvement and cost optimization in more manufacturing fields to help manufacturing companies achieve high-quality development.
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