Analysis of the end-to-end process of material sourcing from an operational excellence perspective. Deduction of a decision model for the logistics process based on a fixed set of materials

In the last years new trends in Logistics and Supply Chain Management have arisen as a reaction to the changes in demand patterns. Manufactures are in a constant search for new methods and strategies for designing not only an efficient but also an agile Supply Chain from supplier to customer. Quality and Pricing are no longer the only influential factors for a company, now Logistics has become a new tool for gaining leverage over competitors. The present work aims to apply these new approaches to a real case study in a manufacturing plant of a multinational corporation of power and automation technologies sector. The goal of this work is to study a representative piece used in the assembly of the final product of the company, detect the weak points along its Supply Chain to the client (production and handling) and develop strategies towards a better future development. To this end, firstly a review of the relevant literature and the conceptual framework has been done focusing on Inventory Control, Supply Reliability and Quality Assurance. Secondly, the current as-is situation has been studied and the piece has been analysed following the conclusions extracted from the State-of-the-Art. Afterwards, a failure occurrence Database has been built and analyse. This analysis is guided towards determining the influence of a set of factors on the behaviour of the two vital parameters in any failure risk analysis: likelihood of occurrence and severity. The conclusions extracted from the data analysis allow assigning priorities. This analysis is strongly focused on the cause-effect relationship, and the importance of finding the cause for definitely removing the problem. It has been observed that few failure types gather the main number of occurrences and solution costs. Moreover, the latter the failure is detected, the bigger the severity of its consequences. Regarding failure causes, it has been observed a lack of efficiency in determining the source of problems. From the specified ones, a Defective Assembly is a highly frequent cause, and efforts should be specially focus here. In order to reduce the impact of these occurrences, several strategies have been proposed aiming to reduce risk, cost and time related to failure occurrence, at the same time that they seek an improvement in quality. It has been concluded that Training Sessions should be organized for covering several aspects of the piece assembly and testing. The improvement of Working Instructions linked to the introduction of new interactive resources has been widely discussed. Due to the results of the piece’s characteristics study, a revision of the current Security Stock strategy should be carried out, together with the evaluation of the suitability of creating a new character in the company: an expert in this piece. Finally, it has been detected that several improving opportunities are linked to the need of a deeper analysis of the piece’s parts, so that more specific information could be obtained