Prognostisering av utrustningar på Volvo Wheel Loaders

Sammanfattning: Volvo in Arvika produces wheel loaders, and the production is based on forecasts. When a machine is ordered, the customer can choose what type of equipment he or she wants, and these equipments are also made forecasts on. This is made by giving each equipment an estimated procentual usage that shows how many of the machines that will use this option. Today two people are working with the forecasts, planer A in Eskilstuna and planer B in Arvika. Planer A makes a forecast based on the historical outcome and planer B then makes adjustments of this based on how many options that are ordered. Volvo in Arvika is having problems with the accuracy of the forecasts and because of this they have got too much in stock. But how big are the forecast deviations, what is the cause of it, in what or which places does the process lack? What can be made to make more accurate forecasts, how can you get a more affective process with less work made? To answer these questions we surveyed the process and analyzed it to find strong and week spots. We found that Planer A has a lack of information about how the forecast influence the stock in Arvika, that she gets pour feedback from production, that Planer B is the only one with knowledge about the forecast work in Arvika. We also made a benchmarking with the factory in Braås to see how they differ. Just like in Arvika there are two people working with the forecasts, but in Braås both of them are located close to the production and they share the options equal. They are also able to fill in for each other if someone would be sick. To see how much the forecast differ from market demand, we have analyzed forecast data from nine different options for eight months. It turned out that the automatic calculated forecasts are a bit high and that planner B lower them. Our conclusion is that the forecasts should be made only in Arvika, and not as it is today when half of it is made in Eskilstuna. There should also be documents and routines on how the work shall be done. This is to make it easier for people that will do the same job in the future.