Värdeflödesanalys med fokus på förbättring av ledtid och leveransprecision

This Master’s thesis has been performed in the drill steel production at Sandvik Materials Technology (SMT) in Sandviken. Drill steel is an important product for SMT and the demand has increased steadily over a long period and is also predicted to increase in the future. SMT has for a long time sought to increase the delivery precision of the delivered drill steel. The current delivery precision goal is to reach 95 per cent, which has not been achieved for a long time. SMT has also expressed an objective to obtain shorter lead times for the drill steel manufacturing chain, from raw material to customer, which historically has been estimated at eight weeks.The purpose of this study is to, through the execution of value stream mapping, identify suggestions for improvement that can make the production and planning process more efficient at a manufacturing company. The methods used to perform this Master’s thesis are literary studies, observations and interviews. In addition to this forecasting, ordering and delivery data collected through the systems used at SMT and also information about cycle times for the constituent processes of the drill steel flow have been gathered. The most influential theories used in this thesis, which also the authors consistently had in mind, are Lean Production, value stream mapping, inventory management principles, line balancing and SMED. The completed mapping of the company’s situation and the analysis show that customer forecasting and ordering patterns do not match for various reasons and that the balance of the drill steel flow is not optimal. On this basis, a number of improvement proposals have been established which include changes related to how the products held in stock should be controlled, how the rolling mill planning should be conducted and how the balance of the drill steel flow should be improved through increased capacity and more stable processes. The study indicates that the delivery accuracy, after implementation of the developed proposals for improvements, could be improved significantly. Throughput time for all the products could be reduced and the stability and efficiency in the production flow could increase. In addition to this, an implementation could potentially lead to lesser variations between forecasts and order quantities.Validerat; 20110217 (anonymous