Optimizing Internal Logistics and Lean Manufacturing

Posted on Feb 10, 2025 in Business Administration and Innovation Management

Technical Services Classification

A. Special

  1. Materials processing
  2. Supply and treatment of industrial waters
  3. Maintenance

B.

  1. Air-conditioning
  2. Fire-prevention service
  3. Lighting
  4. Social services (health and safety, cleanliness and hygiene, professional training, canteen)

Internal Transportation Analysis: Main Objective

To limit costs through:

  • Less product to handle
  • Shorter routes (considering layout concepts)
  • Better use of spaces
  • Productivity increase
  • Waste reduction:
    • A reduction of damages during transportation
    • An increased capability of control of stocked materials

Internal Transportation Analysis: Objectives

To improve working conditions in terms of:

  • Ensuring safety
  • Requiring lower effort

To increase enterprise efficiency through:

  • Better inventory management
  • Rotation of materials, etc.

Main Classifications of Internal Transport

Based on Functioning:

  • Continuous transport (e.g., conveyor belts)
  • Discontinuous transport (e.g., forklift trucks)

Based on Driving Force:

  • Transport with manual movement
  • Transport with motorized movement

Based on Type of Movement:

  • Means for vertical lifting
  • Means for horizontal transport

Based on Type of Command:

  • Means with on-board operator
  • Means with ground operator
  • Means without operator

Solid Materials Transportation

Continuous Systems Features:

  1. Fixed plants with little flexibility.
  2. The movement of materials is continuous, based on pre-existent and fixed lines.
  3. Suitable for continuous and repetitive processes so that the transportation facilities become an integral part of the plant.

Examples:

  • Metal and wood industrial plants
  • Food and beverage industry
  • Transport lines for glass processing
  • Transport lines for the dairy industry
  • Butchery processing lines
  • Clothes transportation
  • Dry cleaner’s

Discontinuous Systems:

  • Plants with good flexibility.
  • Total or partial freedom in the handling routes.
  • Can be manual, mechanical, remote-controlled (wired), or radio-controlled (wireless).

Fluid Materials Transportation

Liquid Materials Transportation:

Liquids are moved into pipes through pumps that work:

  • Through aspiration
  • Through compression (alternative pumps).

Gas Materials Transportation

Gasses are transferred into pipes using compressors:

  • With pistons
  • Centrifugal and/or axial compressors.

Warehouses

Warehouses are places where, for different periods, materials that have to be processed and sold (final product) or used in a company (supply warehouse, auxiliary products, fuel) are stocked.

Depending on the materials contained, warehouses are classified as:

  • Raw materials warehouses
  • Semi-finished products warehouses
  • Finished products warehouses

Warehouses are highly relevant for three reasons:

  1. They have a considerable economic weight: Onerous because of their expenses without a corresponding profit; capitals are often subjected to gradual depreciation (perishable goods or out-of-market goods). Therefore, supplies have to be minimized (rotating or eliminating at least once a year).
  2. Require large areas: Every square meter devoted to a warehouse influences the company costs without any corresponding advantage.
  3. They have to respond to production needs: An industrial warehouse is generally strongly connected to the manufacturing area; the warehouse management has to facilitate the flow of materials.

Warehouse Structure

Depends on:

  • The nature of materials (single products, granulated, powders, etc.)
  • Space availability (buildings with one or more floors, etc.)
  • The type of load.

Tip: A warehouse should not occupy more than a third of the plant’s covered surface. Moreover, in warehouses with multiple floors, the load-bearing capacity of floors decreases from the bottom to the top.

JIT and Quick Changeover

C/O (Changeover) time is the time to switch from one type of item to another.

A performance improvement activity that focuses on:

  • Reducing the changeover time
  • Reducing the cost and effort required to perform a changeover
  • Reaching the benefits that streamlined changeovers provide to many related areas of the production system

JIT (Just-In-Time) Production

The basis of lean thinking came from the Just-In-Time (JIT) production concepts pioneered in Japan at Toyota. JIT means producing what is needed when needed and no more. Anything over the minimum amount necessary is viewed as waste. JIT is typically applied to repetitive manufacturing. JIT does not require large volumes and can be applied to any repetitive segments of a business. The goal is to drive all inventory queues to zero, minimizing inventory investment and shortening lead times. When inventory levels are low, quality problems become very visible. JIT manufacturing exposes problems otherwise hidden by excess inventories and staff.

Benefits:

  1. Reduces operating cost
  2. Greater performance
  3. Higher quality
  4. Improved delivery
  5. Increased flexibility and innovativeness
  6. Shortened lead time
  7. Reduced inventory

Lean Layouts

Group Technology: A philosophy in which similar parts are grouped into families, and the processes required to make the parts are arranged in a manufacturing cell. Eliminates movement and queue time between operations, reduces inventory, and reduces the number of employees required.

Quality at the Source: Do it right the first time, and when something goes wrong, stop the process or assembly line immediately. Factory workers become their own inspectors.

Lean Production Schedules

Uniform Plant Loading: Smoothing the production flow to dampen the reaction waves that normally occur in response to schedule variations is called uniform plant loading.

Kanban Production Control System: Uses a signaling device to regulate JIT flows. Kanban means “sign” or “instruction card” in Japanese. The authority to produce or supply additional parts comes from downstream operations.

Other visual methods besides cards:

  • Kanban squares
  • Container system
  • Colored golf balls

Goals of Lean Manufacturing

Highest quality, lowest cost, and shortest lead time.