Att reducera ledtiden i en produktion med hög variation och låg volym - En casestudie på Lab.gruppen

Abstract

Due to increasing product availability and higher demands on fast deliveries, the competition between companies is growing. To be able to satisfy the customers’ requests an efficient logistics system with short throughput time is required. By using tools associated with Lean production companies are able to make great improvements in their manufacturing systems and reduce lead times to satisfy customer demands. There are two classifications associated with manufacturing, high variety and low volume (HVLV) and low volume and high variety (LVHV). The general belief is that the concept of Lean production is difficult to implement in a production environment with high variety and low volume due to the concept being adapted to mass production. It has been established that different efforts are required to be able to successfully make such an implementation. The company Lab.gruppen is considered to have a production process that falls in between the two manufacturing classifications, but leaning more towards high variety and low volume. The company also has a high degree of control and test of their products. The objective of the case study is to investigate how the lead time in a production flow, characterized by high variety and low volume, can be reduced without deviating from the requirement of testing all products. The company’s value stream has been mapped using the Lean method Value stream mapping presented by Rother and Shook (2003). This has been done to investigate the current state of the production flow as well as identifying factors that affect the lead time. The problem areas were identified and some actions to be taken were proposed in a future state map. A theoretical study was performed to investigate what factors affect the lead time in a company with HVLV qualifications, which resulted in an analytical framework. With the analytical framework and the empirical study as a base, an analysis was executed to reach the purpose of the study. One conclusion was that testing was not the main factor to affect the lead time. According to the case study it was shown that products waiting in between the processes had the greatest effect on the lead time. In addition, it was established that adapted Lean production principles are possible to implement in a company with given conditions.