Case Study
Manufacturing
Achieving single-piece flow would have required major investment
Service line
Business Excellence / Due-diligence
Syngroup Office
Cranfield / UK
Geography
Europe
Manufacturing
Background
Our client is one of the leading T1 automotive suppliers with operations in more than 90 countries and a turnover in excess of $40bn.
The manufacturing process is configured to achieve ‘single-piece’ flow in that each vehicle is customised according to a customers specification. This requires parts to be allocated to a specific body shell and synchronised with the production sequence.
Challenge
  • Due to a number of factors, body-shells were not arriving in the correct sequence and this was causing problems in assembly.
  • Syngroup were asked to assess the situation and suggest a possible solution
Focus Areas
Manufacturing
Assembly
Flow / LEAN
Kanban pull system with demand forecast.
Real time data based Hybrid Pull – Push System.
Production sequencing
Solution
  • Achieving single-piece flow would have required major investment.
  • As the number of variations in body shells were quite low, we suggested our client implement unallocated production in the first instance. The existing buffer storage was more than sufficient and under-utilised.
  • Sequences and lots were locally optimised, while perfectly meeting the demands of assembly. More efficiency, more capacity, ZERO disruption to the assembly sequence.