Aligning Production and Logistics- The case of SKF’s E-factory

Abstract

Efficient production is essential for a production facility to stay profitable in today’s high competitive environment. A high resource utility and well organized production flow is also required to meet intra company standards. At SKF’s E-factory in Gothenburg, a factory relocation led to frequent changing routines and production flows which hindered efficient and well-coordinated operations. Adapted to the complexity of the factory and the production this work develops a methodology that is designed to enable the mapping, analysis and solution creation for the various problems occurring in the factory. The complexity and interdependency of problems and their solution require comprehensive analysis on the levels task responsibility, equipment utilization, factory layout and information flows. Because the extensive problems cannot be cured with only one solution a tool for prioritization was developed and led to an action plan for recommended solution implementation to improve the operations at SKF’s E-factory. The methods developed for this case have high potential to be more generalized and used to solve similar problems.