How to Improve Daily Management in a Production Facility A Case Study at a Swedish Match Production Site

Abstract

Daily management (DM) is widely used in manufacturing companies and tightly connected with Lean production. The purpose includes to increase the routine activities in a company as well as resulting in an improved information flow. However, a unified definition of the concept is lacking, and the purpose of this case study is to understand the problems experienced at one of the sites of the Swedish snus manufacturer Swedish Match. Observations of their daily management, interviews with managers as well as operators and an Affinity-Interrelationship Method (AIM) workshop was conducted as the empirical data collection. To identify the different problems, a thematic analysis on the data collection was conducted. This implies coding the material and grouping the codes into different themes, which are describing the pattern found in the specific codes. The result was 13 codes that were grouped into five themes. With help from the derived theoretical framework in the study, improvement recommendations were given. This included a new meeting structure, a so-called daily accountability structure, within the packaging production. The recommendations were given for both day shift and evening shift, where an additional meeting is included in both shifts. Moreover, a review of each meeting’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and an increased focus on improvement as well as problem-solving, was suggested.