Effektivisering av produktionsplaneringsprocessen inom ETO med hjälp av regressionsanalys : En fallstudie om produktionsplanering och dess påverkan på ett ETO-företag

Sammanfattning: Today’s manufacturing industry is characterized by being highly competitive and drives companies to strive for more efficient product and production system development. One way of achieving this, is by continuous improvement of processes. One important part of lowering waste is by an efficient  production planning. A competitive production system can improve product quality, decrease costs, and improve the general efficiency. Engineering-to-order (ETO) systems face a challenge due to the difficulty to attain an efficient production planning. The difficulty strives from the complex character of the manufacturing processes and the uniqueness of product properties, which makes a good standardization work a challenge. ETO companies often have high reliance on manual-labor with manual data acquisition, which makes it hard to perform effective production planning with high accuracy. One common technique for executing production planning in the ETO-industry represent a multivariate regression analysis     The thesis includes a case study that examines how regression analysis used for production planning within a production of an ETO company can be improved and what effects it has on processes and departments within the company. The problem was addressed by a mixed method approach, qualitative data were collected from semi-structured interviews, observations, and a thorough literature review and quantitative data were mainly collected through document studies. The study shows that regression analysis is suitable for production planning in the ETO industry while emphasizing the importance of high-quality data, partly through implementation of standardizations. The updated model improves main processes in production which in turn gives rise to improvements in support processes performed by other departments.