Conceptual Optimization of amultistage production facility : A study on the current production facility

Abstract: This study contains suggestions for the question “How might the future production setup at Permobil look like?”. The idea is to provide solutions based on inputs from the current knowledge boundariesand practices of the production team. The work aims at gathering data from the current practices within the firm, identify the wastes, needs, and potential improvements and conducting studies on state-ofthe-art Industrial practices, trends, and upcoming future technologies in production. Value stream mapping is done to help better understand the current state across the production facility and hence plan for future production setup. The solutions on strategies for key areas, namely, warehousing, production line, material handling, quality control and overall integrated production setup are derived from first benchmarking against Industrial practices and then deriving options for the flow of resourcesand information across the Production value chain. The study suggests in-detail ideas of what all production trends can be incorporated for the new upcoming production setup in the future and is in tight accordance with Permobil’s lean principles.With the findings from Value Stream Mapping, we made suggestions for new layouts for the newfactory, and we ranked these suggestions based on an evaluation model. Automation in material handling, setup of the assembly line, changes in current customization setup and use of technology in many ways to aid in the operations are identified as the important transitions for future setup. Finally using the results from the layout suggestions, we performed a warehouse simulation between the suggested layout and the current layout based on distance travelled and parts delivered to line.Concluding this study by connecting the findings from VSM, Layout suggestions and Warehousesimulation.