The role of trial runs in manufacturing : A case study at a packaging company

Sammanfattning: As the world puts increasing demands on sustainability, each organization has a responsibility to act, not only for its business to stay relevant but also for the world. It is possible to work towards sustainable development by replacing fossil-based materials with renewable and recyclable materials. Being able to match the customer requirements with new developments is important for companies, but before they can do that, manufacturing companies need to test that the developments they supply fulfill the performance requirements. Trial runs enable companies to internally test developments, usually through a considerable number of iterations, before supplying them to customers. The objective of this thesis has been to gain a larger understanding of the role of trial runs in productdevelopment as well as to investigate the economic effects of trial runs. The objective has been fulfilled by conducting a case study at a packaging company. The studied case is a production line where the production of paperboards with both dispersion and extrusion technology is performed. Dispersion technology, which enables a protecting layer for liquid and food packaging is a relatively new technology enabling better recycling opportunities than substitute technologies. The production line can produce paperboard with either dispersion or extrusion technology as the company aims to combine the two technologies in the future. Research question A aimed to investigate the role of trial runs from three different internal viewpoints: sustainability, strategic, and operational. Research question B aimed at investigating the economic effects of trial runs. Research question A was answered through a literature and interview study while research question B has been answered through a literature study, unstructured interviews, and a quantitative cost analysis. Quantitative data from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems were collected to perform a cost analysis on trial runsas well as a comparison of time utilization between trial runs and ordinary production. For research question A, the results from the interview study show that trial runs are an important tool for a company to stay competitive. Analysis has shown that trial runs help a company fulfill the needs of the future, act as a driver for innovation, and help actualize business strategies by testing new developments in production facilities. There are thus many aspects motivating trial runs, but there are however also many challenges affecting the role of trial runs within a packaging company. The most prominent challenges are different depending on the viewpoint of the interviewee. From thesustainability viewpoint, one of the most mentioned challenges was the balancing of customer requirements with the technical feasibility of the products. The most prominent challenges mentioned by the strategic viewpoint were the efficiency of the facility while performing trial runs as well as the need to work in different time horizons simultaneously. Lastly, the most prominent challenges for the operational viewpoint was communicative misunderstandings and challenges as well as the high degree of manual work when performing trial runs. For research question B, the value adding activities constitute 78% of the total cost per produced ton for trial runs, while set-up, ramping up, and stop constitute 12%, 1%, and 9%, respectively. Theanalysis shows that trial runs cause significantly more set-up and stop time than ordinary production.For trial runs, value adding activities are taking place 57% of the time while for ordinary production, value is added 86% of the time, which confirms the result from the interview study about trial runs resulting in efficiency challenges for the facility.