Product Development of Material Supply : Implementation of Karakuri Kaizen

Abstract: The industry 4.0 is continuously aiming to produce faster, increasing quality, and strictly using what is necessary to achieve efficiency enhancement. Within the wide list of methods used to reach this target, robot automation is usually used, although is expensive and rigid. Alternatively, a Japanese cheap automation philosophy called "Karakuri", is being introduced by Volvo GTO to manage this goal. This thesis relies on this philosophy, which takes profit of the existing energy, like gravity, to put in motion mechanisms, in order to reduce costs and improve the production efficiency by developing a semi-automated material handling system. The design method followed, the Scrum, divides the thesis in several phases of development, presenting a fully developed solution at the end of each one and iteratively increasing the level of definition along the process, to finally provide a solution suitable to be implemented.