Reduction of non-value added work at Essity Hygiene and Health AB : Opportunities for automation and digitalization in Baby products production at Falkenberg Plant
Abstract: Today's new technology provides endless opportunities to automate and digitize operations. An increasing number of companies replace manual tasks with new technologies, aiming at increasing efficiency and productivity. This master thesis project was made in corporation with Essity Hygiene and Health AB at Falkenberg. In order for Essity to continue to be one of the leading manufacturers and maintain their financial ability, they need to take a step in the right direction towards a more modern production. The purpose with the project is to propose ways to reduce the amount of manual non-value adding work performed by operators, with focus on time losses, ergonomic and safety. The project shall deliver realistic concepts that reduce manual tasks performed by operators through automation, and find new ways to quality-proof the material. The project has worked according to an iterative work process where the cycle was repeated, until the outcome satisfied the needs. The project started with mapping the current state where Fenix 2, one of the machines, was selected for the mapping. Two weeks was spent in the production to gain understanding of the operators work tasks and working environment. The project did, among other things, observations, interviews, surveys, ergonomic analysis, flowcharts and spaghetti diagrams. The result from the current state shows that the refill of material is the most time-consuming task for the operators. It was also made clear, based on step counters and spaghetti diagrams that the operators walk a lot. The result from the mapping formed the basis for the development areas. The project chose to proceed with the material refill, walking and the quality and made requirement specifications for each area. An ideation process was used to generate as many ideas as possible for the chosen areas. The ideas then became early concepts, which were evaluated with weighted matrixes and feedback from employees. The concepts were then further developed into three final concepts, Ground Floor, Second Floor and Integration. The concepts shows that it is possible to reduce the manual working time with 4,5 hour per shift and decrease the walking with better information system. Further recommendation is that Essity proceed with the results, both the mapping and the concepts. The recommendation is to do another evaluation and include the operators in the process and after that use the results in this thesis as the basis for future implementations.
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