Utveckling av Materialförsörjning : En studie av Sandvik Coromants försörjning av stål

This report is a master thesis performed by Adam Lundin at the company Sandvik Coromants production facility in Gimo. The work started in January 2013 and went on for the duration of 20 weeks, which is equivalent to 30 hp. The project was executed at the department GVR10. The scope of the project was to create a base for improvements in the purchasing process of direct material to the production. The background to the project was that the centralized purchasing department has gone through changes and decision was taken to decentralize the purchasing of direct material to Gimo. The new purchasing function will manage both the operative part of buying but also the strategic planning in order to match the requirements to the production. The report aims to give suggestions to improvement areas within the buying of steel. Subjects covered are order procedures, material handling, stock and quality of the purchased material. The study covers four manufacturing groups within the production facility. The suggestions for improvement shall be given to the purchasing function as concrete proposals within quality control and how to manage communication with internal and external stakeholders. In addition to this, suggestions will be given in how the production unit in Gimo can work in order to achieve the strategic goals. The study has been conducted by interviews within the production and the purchasing department. The production facility has been studied by a participant observation as complement to the interviews. In the study focus was put on daily routines connected to the purchasing of direct material and also on meetings with suppliers. In order to become a better specifier and reach higher quality levels of the purchased material there is a need to start measuring quality and collect data out in the production groups. There is great improvement potential in having visible stock adjacent to the production so that the clearing-off will become more correct. This can lead to better visability of the production quality as whole. There is knowledge to gain from the flow groups of GVH where the monitoring of material and production quality has been improved by better communication and continous improvement meetings with suppliers. In order to achieve the strategic goals with shorter lead times and a greater product variation there is a need for audit of the material dimensions. Some of the dimensions have too long delivery time which can be solved by decreasing the amount of dimensions and change some manufacturing processes, or by holding a safety stock of low frequent dimensions