STUDY OF A LEAN MANUFACTURING LABORATORY: IMPROVEMENTS TOWARDS AUTOMATION

Abstract: The intention of the Master thesis is to suggest and provide a comprehensive picture of the improvements of a lean manufacturing laboratory installed in Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH) previously located in Atlas Copco’s facilities. This study is initiated with a solid literature review about learning factories, lean philosophy and automated manufacturing. This information, gathered in the literature review section, has allowed the acquisition of the necessary knowledge to first understand the functioning and design of lean laboratories, as well as to internalize the important role that these learning modules play in the development and research of companies. Corporations need these tools to smooth the transition to new, more competitive and efficient production systems. In the same way, as it has been commented, the thesis has the purpose of bringing the lean philosophy closer to the students. For this purpose, some of the most important tools that make up this philosophy have been studied and analyzed, seeking the best way to present it and implement it in the laboratory. Finally, the search for information has focused on the automated manufacturing; the advances in this technology together with the lean philosophy allow reaching higher levels of efficiency on the production and assembly lines. As it has been proven in several articles, automation is the ideal and necessary complement to the lean philosophy, as a preliminary step to industry 4.0. For this reason, automation solutions have also been sought to help the lean lab reaching a higher production stage. In the second stage of this work there is an inquiry of the current assembly line, identifying the source of waste in time and resources. In this section the focus is on what the lean laboratory consists of, explaining how it is ran and what is the purpose of it. A detailed explanation of the components of the laboratory is presented along with, the disposition of it and the operations at each workstation. After this analysis, the results of the lean laboratory are shown and there is a following discussion about the results the students got in each stage, what aspects of the assembly were causing wastes and how improve them. Finally, after the analysis phase, a proposal of improvements and a posterior discussion of their advantages and drawbacks are discussed, deciding which of the improvements should be put in place in the line. The improvements that are proposed in this work will aim to improve the line in 2 directions: the automation of the line and the inclusion of new lean manufacturing techniques that help the students to understand production and control.