Efficient use of resources and utility is the key to reduce the price of the commodities produced in any industry. This in turn would lead to reduced price of the commodity which is the key to success. Sustainability involves integration of all the three dimensions: environmental, economic and social. Sustainable manufacturing involves the use of sustainable processes and systems to produce better sustainable products. These products will be more attractive, and the industry will know more about the climate impact from their production.   Manufacturing companies use a considerable amount of energy in their production processes. One important area to understand the sustainability level at these types of industries is to study this energy use. The present work studies energy use in a large-scale tool manufacturing company in Sweden. Value Stream Mapping method is implemented for the purpose of mapping the energy use in the different operations. To complement this, an energy audit has been conducted, which is a method that include a study and analysis of a facility, indicating possible areas of improvements by reducing energy use and saving energy costs. This presents an opportunity for the company to implement energy efficiency measures, thus generating positive impacts through budget savings. Less energy use is also good for the environment resulting in less greenhouse gas emissions level. This also helps in long-term strategic planning and initiatives to assess the required needs and stabilize energy use for the long run. Social sustainability completes the triad along with environmental and economic sustainability. In this study, the latter is reflected with the company’s relationship with its working professionals, communities and society.

Nowadays, the global economy imposes great competition between companies that creates an intense pressure. Due to this increasing competition, companies have to keep improving their process for becoming more efficient to lower costs while improving their quality level and providing a better service. A company that does not improve every year is a company that is dying. Although Kraft Foods Inc. is the world’s second largest food company, they also need to keep improving in order to maintain its competitive position on the market and this is why they have been implementing the Lean culture in France since 2007. They want to become more efficient by eliminating all the activities that the customer is not willing to pay for, defined as waste. Providing more value with fewer resources, goal of Lean manufacturing, should make Kraft Foods France even more competitive. However, in order to become Leaner, the nine plants of Kraft Foods Biscuit needed a structured method because the first difficulty of eliminating wastes lies in identifying them. The main purpose of this thesis was to develop one of the most important Lean tools to identify wastes called “Value Stream Mapping”. This master thesis will therefore explain and describe how mapping the value stream can help identifying and eliminating the wastes but also can be a priceless support to share a common vision of the value stream among managers. This tool should be seen as the starting point of any improvements projects since it allows identifying opportunities for improvement that will improve the bottom line of the company. VSM should be used to challenge the status quo and the behaviors of all employees in order to improve Quality, Cost, Delivery, Safety, Sustainability and Morale. This master thesis will deal with the two main missions I led in order to reach this goal. The first mission was to develop a standard of the Value Stream Mapping for Kraft Foods France. I was asked to participate in the structuralizing and in the standardization of the VSM tool for the company. The tool was first analyzed and then a taylor-made VSM tool was developed to meet the characteristics and needs of the food industry. The last step of this mission was to train managers and engineers so that they can lead VSM projects themselves, in any plants, that can help them identifying improvements to be done. The second mission was to apply this method in different production lines to show managers the effectiveness of the tool for identifying rooms for improvement that could increase the productivity of theses studied production lines. For example, the project at Granville’s plant, described in the last part of the thesis, shows what types of improvements can be identified thanks to a Value Stream Mapping project since this project led to a productivity improvement of 40 k€. On completion of this thesis, I wish to have contributed to the emergence of the good use of Value Stream Mapping tool at Kraft Foods that will help the company to keep improving and focusing on customers.

CGI är ett av världen största IT-tjänsteföretag med säte i Kanada. I Sverige erbjuder CGI flera tjänster där Business Process Services (BPS) är en av dem. Inom BPS finns grupperingen Data Documenting Services (DDS). DDS:s uppgift är att förmedla meddelanden till och mellan såväl människor som företag, via olika kanaler. Meddelanden som förmedlas i form av fysiska utskrifter, exempelvis administrativ post, hanteras inom tjänsten Printing Services. Administrativ post är till exempel kontrolluppgifter från skatteverket och försäkringsbrev. På Printing Services’ produktionsanläggning i Slagsta Strand söder om Stockholm printas, efterbehandlas och kuverteras drygt 440 miljoner sidor årligen, vilka genererar 150 miljoner försändelser per år. Ledningsgruppen på Printing Services anser att uttaget per investerad timme är för lågt, varför syftet med detta arbete är att utvärdera eventuella problem och identifiera potentiella förbättringar inom produktionen. Arbetets mål har varit att genomföra en kartläggning av verksamheten, utvärdera Printing Services mätmetoder samt identifiera förbättringsförslag inom varje delprocess och prioritera dessa. Resultatet är baserat på praktik, semistrukturerade intervjuer och visuella studier av delprocesserna. Resultatet av arbetet presenteras i form av textbeskrivningar och swimlane-diagram för respektive avdelning, där nuläget och ett potentiellt framtidsläge beskrivs. De identifierade förbättringsförslagen prioriteras i en PICK-matris. Slutsatserna som dragits under examensarbetet är censurerade. Nyckelord: Lean, Värdeflödesanalys, Print, Kuvertering / CGI is based in Canada and is one of the world’s largest IT service companies. CGI provides the Swedish market with several services including Business Process Services (BPS). Within BPS is Data Documenting Services (DDS). DDS’s main task is to communicate messages through various channels both directly to, and between, people and enterprises. DDS has a service called Printing Services that is responsible for all physical printouts. Printing Services is located in Slagsta Strand, an area south of Stockholm. At this facility more than 440 million pages are printed, post processed, and enveloped annually which generates around 150 million postal items each year. The management team of Printing Services considers the production rate to be unsatisfactory; therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate this problem and to identify potential improvements in the production. The goals of the thesis have been to conduct a Value Stream Mapping of Printing Services, evaluate Printing Services’ performance measurements, and provide suggestions for improvements and order of priority. The gathering of information, as a base for the thesis, was done by performing internships at Printing Services divisions, semi-structured interviews, and visual studies of sub-processes. The results of the thesis describe the present and the future state of Printing Services, presented in text and swimlane diagrams, with a prioritization of the suggestions for improvements in a PICK-matrix. The conclusions are censored. Keywords: Lean, Value Stream Mapping, Print, Enveloping

Today, companies have to redesign and improve their operational performance to cope with the market competition. While research related to organizational improvements has focused on applications of value stream mapping in mass production plants, it is unclear whether value steam mapping can be applied in new product introduction organizations. This thesis strives to generate and describe a customized value stream mapping tool adapted to manage twofold customer value within new product introduction environments, processes that construct products and information gathered from the production and incorporated into next generation products. The study is conducted with a case study approach including an application of the model in an industrial setting. The findings implicate that the value stream mapping tool is applicable when managing performance improvements during new product introduction. Moreover, performance measures to evaluate the new product introduction information loop are presented.

The steel production is a highly capital and energy intensive industry that due to recent raw materials’ price increase and lowered demand, it has been squeezed and forced to look more deeply on how to add value to the customer at lower operative costs. The project was carried out on site at the ArcelorMittal’s millin Esch-Belval, Luxembourg which comprises an integrated melt shop, continuous casting plant and the rolling mill with the objectives of proposing optimization rules for the cold sector of the rolling mill and to analyze the impact of the future truckbay shipment area. The course of action followed was to draw a Value Stream Map (VSM) in order to understand the plants’ current status and serve as a roadmap to build a discrete event simulation model that after its validation, served as a support tool to analyze what-if scenarios. Similarly, a current status analysis of the  shipment/stock area was conducted collecting statistics about potential truckshipments and finally proposing a series of recommendations for its operation. The main proposed solutions to optimize the rolling mill’s cold sector were:(a) Integer programming model to globally optimize the scrap level when cutting the mother beams to customer size beams. (b) Updating pacemaker parameters and (c) Local process time improvements. Concerning the future truck loading, the simulation model was used as a support tool to dimension the transition area between the cranes’ and forklift operations resulting in a 6-9 bundles buffer capacity. Additionally, the current length-based storage policy was found to have competitive objectives so a turnover class-based storage policy is proposed with A, B, C classes which should provide an improved organization of the stock and travel distance of the cranes. The evaluation of the cranes’ performance remains an issue since there are currently no objective measures like, for instance, travelled distance. Optical measuring devices are suggested as one option to have a performance indicator that would help further investigate root cause problems in the shipping/stock area.

No description available.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / This study focuses on problems of inadequate production capacity management. The factors that generate this scenario are related to the incorrect distribution of work areas, the absence of standardization of the production process and unorganized workstations in the production line. The application of 5S’s tool, Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and a proposal for plant design are presented to solve the problem. After the application of the design solution, it was identified that 1 h and 23 min can be saved in transfer times, which can be invested in the manufacture of more products, improving the use of the plant’s capacity.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / This paper proposes the application and implementation of the lean thinking methodology at a company dedicated to selling vehicles, spare parts, and post-sales services. For these purposes, tools such as process maps, flowcharts, indicators, system layout planning tools, and 5S implementation are used, supported by training sessions for process participants. As a result, customer complaints were reduced by 0.13% per month, and the number of work orders handled by the site increased by 0.38% per month. Moreover, a 0.32% increase in man/hour productivity was reported, leading to a 44.32% decrease in Duster vehicle delivery times.

Currently, there is a monthly breach with its vehicle delivery policy. This policy refers to said company, it refers to a minimum of 92% of units towards the points of sale. However, in the last quarter of 2017 and the semester of 2018, it has only been met from 82% to 90%. These are 5% -10% that have not come to meet in each month, but also directly to the profitability of the company. On the one hand, storage costs are increased by each car that does not arrive or dissatisfaction is generated by the customer, this is the problem of 3 main causes, which is the installation time of radios, installation of alarms and more vehicles that are not served in the damage assessment area. As a root cause, we have the first, since, on the one hand, a bottleneck is generated by the lack of car attention and, on the other hand, represents 20% of the monthly sales of the case study, For what needs to be done to reduce this bottleneck and increase the capacity of the vehicles in this area, the damage is detailed, two lines of evaluation are carried out. This type of triage, we ensure a standardized work, since there was a group of vehicles waiting with different types of damage in the same operating line. Also, the delivery of vehicles on time is improved to 95% and the times of the areas of installation of radios, installation of alarms and damage assessment are reduced by 42.85%, 51.42% and 50% respectively.

Dagens parallella ökning av konsumtion och hållbarhetstänk ställer höga krav på företag. Digitaliseringen och den tekniska progressionen utmanar företag än mer att arbeta mot ständig förbättring för att bibehålla sin konkurrenskraft och är en aspekt som studien lyfter. En av de väsentligaste aktiviteterna att reformera för en transportdistributör inom tillväxtfasen är dess planering och i denna studie läggs vikten således på rutteffektivisering utifrån både kostnads-och miljöaspekter. För att utforma en gynnsam ruttplanering är en av de viktigaste aspekterna informationsflödet. Det finns en tydlig koppling att företag som har ett ineffektivt informationsflöde har svårigheter med att ta fram en ruttplanering som är effektiv. Studien har sitt fokus på mindre företag som befinner sig i tillväxtfasen och hur dessa fördelaktigt kan effektivisera sin ruttplanering och informationsflöde för att bibehålla sin konkurrenskraftighet. Utifrån det teoretiska ramverket, intervjuer och tilldelad data identifieras brister inom informationsflödet och ruttplaneringen. Teorier om omvänd logistik, ruttplanering, värdeflödesanalys och informationssystem med fokus på kommunikation kommer appliceras och användas. Det ska dessutom påvisas varför en bra och välutvecklad ruttplanering är mer gynnsam för ett företag. Via en kartläggning har dessa brister undersökts och reformeringsförslag på informationsflödet har framställts. Dessutom har, via en jämförelse av ruttplanering mellan ett stort mer erfaret företag och ett litet företag med mindre erfarenhet, fördelar och tankesätt kring utförandet av en ruttplanering framtagits. Det visar sig att ett noggrant och grundligt genomtänkt ruttplanering och information och kommunikations-system anpassat efter organisationens behov och prioriteringar skapar konkurrenskraftighet, till skillnad från att använda penna och papper metoden. Vetenskapligt framtagna manuella ruttplaneringsmetoder så som fasta slingor och svepmetoden appliceras fördelaktigt på ett företag i tillväxtfasen. Det genererar samtidigt i en hög kundtillfredsställelse och lönsamhet samtidigt som det ökar miljömedvetenheten hos små företag i tillväxtfasen. Utöver detta skapas en trygghet för den anställde och kontroll över företagets resurser och kapaciteter fås. Problem som är förekommande inom informationsflödet är bland annat ej standardiserad information i körscheman men med hjälp av rutiner, standarder och ett nuläge att utgå ifrån kan ett förbättringsarbete påbörjas och styras i rätt riktning. Studien påvisar att detta är av stor vikt även inom ruttplanering. / Today's parallel increase in consumption and sustainability thinking places high demands on companies. Digitization and technological progression challenge companies even more to work towards continuous improvement in order to maintain their competitiveness and is an aspect that the study highlights. One of the most important activities to reform for a transport distributor within the growth phase is its planning, and in this study the emphasis is thus on route efficiency based on both cost and environmental aspects. In order to design a profitable route planning, one of the most important aspects is the information flow. There is a clear link that companies that have an inefficient information flow have difficulties in developing a route planning that is efficient. The study focuses on smaller companies that are in the growth phase and how these can advantageously streamline their route planning and information flow to maintain their competitiveness. Based on the theoretical framework, interviews and assigned data, shortcomings in the information flow and route planning are identified. Theories of reverse logistics, route planning, value stream map analysis and information systems with a focus on communication will be applied and used. It also demonstrates why a good and well-developed route planning is more favorable for a company. Through a survey, these shortcomings have been investigated and reform proposals for the information flow have been made. In addition, through a comparison of route planning between a large, more experienced company, and a small company with less experience, advantages, and ways of thinking about the execution of a route planning have been developed. It turns out that a carefully and thoroughly thought-out route planning and information and communication system adapted to the organization's needs and priorities creates competitiveness, as opposed to using the pen and paper method. Scientifically developed manual route planning methods such as fixed loops and the sweep method are advantageously applied to a company in the growth phase. At the same time, it generates a high level of customer satisfaction and profitability while increasing the environmental awareness of small companies in the growth phase. In addition to this, security is created for the employee and control over the company's resources and capacities is gained. Problems that occur in the information flow include non-standardized information in driving schedules, but with the help of routines, standards, and a current situation to compare with, improvement work can be started and steered in the right direction. The study shows that it is also of great importance when it comes to route planning.