Produktionslogistik för en processindustri - En studie på Kemira Kemi AB

Sammanfattning: Kemwater is a business unit in Kemira Kemi AB which is owned by the Finnish chemical-corporation Kemira Oy. Kemwater manufactures and sells water treatment chemicals and offers custom made water-treatment-solutions. Kemwaters headquarters and largest production plant (VA) is situated in Helsingborg, Sweden. The production plant has lately been affected by a decrease in customer order volume. This has led to a lower production pace and the company experiences that the importance of good planning and optimal batch processing has decreased. As a consequence, a large part of the available production time is consumed by unplanned stops. The company sees problems in meeting a future demand for full capacity utilization due to lack of prepared forecasting, follow-up and planning routines. To solve the problems stated above, the planning procedure must be rearranged so that vacant production capacity is transformed to available production capacity at the same time as customer demand is obliged. To meet the purpose of the thesis, a qualitative and quantitative method is combined. Qualitative data is collected through interviews and supports the quantitative data collected. To analyze the overall perspective Terry Hill’s model is used and to analyze the planning problem, well-recognized theories in manufacturing planning and control systems are used. In a prefatory analysis it shows that the infrastructure is incorrectly configured to meet the process choice and present customer demands. The problems which show in the infrastructure are closely linked to the manufacturing planning and control systems (MPC-systems). Above all, it is the lack of relevant system support, which automates planning and forecasting, that creates the discrepancies. An all too short planning horizon has led to a bad general view over the capacity requirements. This, together with a large number of unplanned stops, has led to a fragmentation of the available production capacity. It turns out, that by changing the MPC-system, manufacturing costs are reduced and the infrastructure is configured so that it better support the company’s process choice and present customer demand. The changed MPC-system also leads to an organization that is better prepared for changes in capacity demand and becomes more adaptive for future changes. Jointly for the planning chain as a whole, is that the introduction of system support automates the work. The system support also involves reliable forecasting, which is one of the most crucial parts in good MPC practice, and links all the planning levels together. The company should use the existing planning modules and forecasting tools in the ERP-system. The changes should initially be concentrated to the higher planning levels as they form the foundation on which functioning planning on the lower planning levels can be built. A person responsible for the planning procedures should be appointed. It is important to see the MPC as a whole and not as separate parts.