Kartläggning för effektivisering av produktflöde : En fallstudie på ett tillverkande industriföretag

Sammanfattning: A company´s competitiveness in today’s society depends largely on their production flow efficiency. The concept of Lean Production plays an important role to achieve and retain a higher flow efficiency. In this study, research is carried at the production department of one manufacturing company that is interested in investigating its production flow efficiency on a defined production flow. The department generally plans its production based on the forecasts that vary with big uncertainty and usually result in a pushing production flow towards a finished goods inventory. The problems hence arise with unnecessary storage, handling and movement of materials. Consequently, the adjustments often have to take place and lead to an uneven production flow with high capital tied up. The purpose of this study is to analyze the production process in the context of lean production for improving the production flow efficiency of the case company. Specifically, the value stream mapping tool is applied for mapping the current state of the value flow, identifying the value-added and non-value-added activities in the defined product flow, and finding out the possibility of the improvements to a more efficient value flow from supplier to customer. The mapping of the current value flow resulted in a low production flow efficiency for the case company. A number of suggestions for production flow efficiency improvements are finally proposed. These suggestions are expected to be realistically feasible and to have a positive impact on the flow efficiency.