Internal Logistics in Volvo Cars Engines

This project started as a research project at the University of Skövde. It consists on the application of lean production principles on logistics flows using simulation and optimization tools applied to energetic consumption on internal logistics in Volvo Car Engines. 

Lean production is a management method that grows and expands day by day. It remarks the importance of avoiding wastes in order to improve the efficiency and the benefits on a company, anything that supposes a cost an does not contribute with any value to the final product is considered a waste. Toyota has actually been applying Lean production techniques from the World War II, that hast made of it one of the most profitable car's companies in the world. The Toyota Katas are the raising hypothesis. A kata is a Japanese word that defines a standardized behaviour that is repeated always on the act following the same routine. They start determining the current situation that needs to be improved or the problem that needs to be solved. After that, they fix the final result that is desirable to be achieved and use it continuously as orientation point. However, the focus of the improvement process is not on the final result. The development is based on a step by step process. Each of the steps creates a new current situation; each current situation requires a new target condition; that will be the next step. The Improvement Kata uses the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) scientific method on each step of the process. 

Within the Lean philosophy, a detailed study of the logistic flows of the factory has been carried out in order to locate useless or repetitive movement of materials. To this aim, a simulation model has been constructed; this model is modified several times following the PDCA method. Each improvement on the model generates a new model with new advantages and disadvantages. Because of that, several combinations on the logistics flows will be tested and evaluated until achieving the optimal solution.

The project is divided on the following phases:

• Identificacion and mapping of the pallet flows
• Selection and collection of the necesary data for building the simulation model
• Generation of a simulation model that will allow checking the behaviour of the pallets' flow under different rates of production (high-low levels). It will be observed if the actual flows' configuration is adequate, or could be interesting to generate different configurations depending on the production rates. 
• Analyze how new strategies based on the Toyota katas and general principles of Lean production can improve the behaviour of the flows and combine them with the actual system.