Improving on-time delivery in a multi-product assembly factory
Koudinova, Maria (2018)
2018
Tuotantotalous
Talouden ja rakentamisen tiedekunta - Faculty of Business and Built Environment
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2018-12-05
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201811122560
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201811122560
Tiivistelmä
The objective of the study was to improve production planning and control (PPC) practices to answer current and, especially, future needs at Wärtsilä Suzhou Ltd. (WSZ) in China producing various product lines for the marine market. The main research question was: ”How to organise PPC at WSZ so that it is responsive to the needs of a multi-product factory?” The study was conducted as an applied case study. The research methods used were unstructured interviews, benchmarking to other delivery centres, interventions and observation. Data for analysis was taken from the company’s ERP-system and manually recorded spreadsheets. The main finding was an under 20% on-time delivery (OTD) performance caused by a lack of systematic PPC practices, with employees not knowing the status of orders they are responsible for. Additionally, mate-rial shortages in production lead to high levels of work in process (WIP) and long lead times.
From PPC frameworks aggregate planning combines demand to the level of resources over a fixed planning horizon, quick response manufacturing emphasises lead time reduction and workload control levels workload to capacity. None of the above are fully applicable to the context of WSZ, so solution searching was done through benchmarking and interventions. Interventions carried out were full-kitting to improve work flow and material availability management to proactively monitor material arrival. For full-kitted products on-time start of assembly (SoA) was not possible if there was no floor or worker capacity. Also, new ways of working were not sustained showing a gap between strategic decisions and actions. This was explained by the cultural context of China, where supervision is expected.
The output of this thesis is an outline of PPC practices to improve WSZ’s OTD performance through taking responsibility, being disciplined and forward-looking. Slot planning could be used for production planning to base scheduling on floor and worker capacity. Weekly meetings should be held to discuss production enabler availability for products with planned SoA during the next eight weeks. Using a “traffic lights” tool would help in-house tracking and communicating the accurate status of orders to the internal customer. Full-kitting should be continued as implemented, but material availability management should be improved to require less buyer resources.
From PPC frameworks aggregate planning combines demand to the level of resources over a fixed planning horizon, quick response manufacturing emphasises lead time reduction and workload control levels workload to capacity. None of the above are fully applicable to the context of WSZ, so solution searching was done through benchmarking and interventions. Interventions carried out were full-kitting to improve work flow and material availability management to proactively monitor material arrival. For full-kitted products on-time start of assembly (SoA) was not possible if there was no floor or worker capacity. Also, new ways of working were not sustained showing a gap between strategic decisions and actions. This was explained by the cultural context of China, where supervision is expected.
The output of this thesis is an outline of PPC practices to improve WSZ’s OTD performance through taking responsibility, being disciplined and forward-looking. Slot planning could be used for production planning to base scheduling on floor and worker capacity. Weekly meetings should be held to discuss production enabler availability for products with planned SoA during the next eight weeks. Using a “traffic lights” tool would help in-house tracking and communicating the accurate status of orders to the internal customer. Full-kitting should be continued as implemented, but material availability management should be improved to require less buyer resources.