Analys av Husqvarna AB:s lastbilstransporter till Italien

Sammanfattning: The thesis has been written as a part of the Bachelor degree in Industrial engineering and management at the School of Engineering in Jönköping. The work is focused on the part of Husqvarna AB’s supply chain that is associated with the lorry transports to Italy. Husqvarna AB has approximately ten Italian customers, whose delivery patterns have been studied from January 2007 to July 2008. Some of the customers have a low delivery frequency and small amounts of goods that they therefore have not been fully analyzed in this report. The main focus has been put on the two largest customers. The main goal of this thesis is to analyze how the lorry transports to Italy can be made more cost-effective with maintained or increased customer service level. In addition, it is intended that the result of this thesis will become applicable for the transports to the rest of the European countries. To structure the work and to reach the main goal, it has been fragmented into three sub targets. Today, Husqvarna AB works with two fixed departure days per week to Italy. Exceptionally there can be more frequent deliveries in case of enough goods to fill up a lorry. The costs for the transports are regulated by the agreement Huqvarna AB has with DHL. To reach the result of this thesis a data collection was made as an introduction, to gather all the information regarding the shipments which had departed during the investigated period. Each customer was put in a separate Excel sheet, where the costs were calculated for the current situation as well as for the different solutions that were introduced by the authors. To assure that consideration was taken to the customer service a structured written interview was distributed to representatives from the two largest customers. The result shows that changes can take place in several steps. It is estimated that the most cost-effective solution would give a reduction of the transportation costs by over 40 percent. However, the authors do not hold this solution as implementable, as it gives a too low delivery frequency to keep an acceptable customer service level. The alternative which the authors would like to recommend the thesis submitter Husqvarna AB gives a reduction of the transportation costs by 13.7 percent and involves lowering the delivery frequency to departures once a week, or more often if there are enough goods to fill a lorry. Furthermore the solution implies a usage of the rules in the agreement with DHL, which allows mixed consignments to customers within the same zone. The authors do not think that this solution will affect the customer service level in a noticeable way, but if further research should show that that is the case, the authors have stressed a number of small changes in the discussion chapter. They do for example concern improvements of packing and loading.