Effektivisering av mindre lager

The project was conducted during a period from November 2014 to January 2015 at the company Westermo Teleindustri AB (WTE). The subject of the project was to make an inventory more efficient. The inventory was located at WTE, but was owned by the subsidiary Westermo Sverige (WSE). The inventory had a high amount of tied up capital. This was due to products that hadn’t been sold. After a while, some of these products became obsolete and defected and had to be scrapped. WSE wanted to increase the size of the inventory while WTE wanted to decrease both the size of the inventory and the amount of tied up capital by half. The purpose of the project was to investigate the possibility of reducing the amount of tied up capital, the size of the inventory, sustain the service level to the customers and improving the forecasts of the demand. The tools that have been applied are: Ishikawa diagram, 5S and 7+1 wastes (muda). These tools have contributed to information that was used in further work such as calculations and suggestions for improvements. Calculations and studies have been applied to the forecasts, the processes and to the layout. Studies have been made on the ABC-classes and the safety stock as well. By implementing forecasts, the group thinks that the size of the inventory could be smaller. If the products that haven’t been sold were to be removed from the inventory, the tied up capital could be reduced. The size of the inventory could also be smaller if these products would to be removed. The group was not able to tell if these reduces was by half or not. The group thinks that if WSE would update their ABC-classes, they could use the same system as WTE uses to calculate their forecasts. The service level will not be affected negatively by this system, since it takes consideration to the company’s desired service level. The inventory should be structured to make it easier to handle. The sorting should be made, based on how the employees think is the most logic way to handle the products. A proposition for how the inventory should be sorted have been suggested. The suggestion is that the products and product accessories are sorted separately. After that, all of these products should be sorted by part number, so that they will be easier to find. This will ease the process of placing a new product into the inventory. To sustain a solution that will last, the group thinks that the company should optimize the order handling, implement 5S, calculate the ABC-classes for the products in the inventory, calculate which products that should have a safety stock, communicate and keep working with continuous improvements