<p>ABB Capacitors is looking to introduce LEAN within their organization. The purpose of this research is to suggest ways to improve the production planning in order to facilitate the company’s production processes. This should be done in accordance with the LEAN concept.</p><p>Today, ABB will produce two of the customers’ orders at the same time. To avoid major disturbances it is important to work with production planning to create a balanced production mix. During the planning it is important to consider that each order may create different “bottlenecks” in production line. Therefore, the aim of this project is to help ABB find an appropriate production mix with the incoming orders. Furthermore, the researchers have developed a tool which can facilitate the planning and make it easier and more sustainable.</p><p>The production process has been carefully observed and the capacity has been calculated for each station. The production capacity included the capacity of each station within the production line but also information from previous time studies has been used during the research. The time studies have been performed by a consultant though because the production process has developed since these studies were performed, the information had to be updated.</p><p>The updated information together with the calculated capacity of each station, have been used to create a spread sheet which can be used as a planning tool.</p><p>Recommendations for future actions have been developed, with help from the analysis and conclusions. These recommendations will support ABB in their future work.</p>

ABB Capacitors is looking to introduce LEAN within their organization. The purpose of this research is to suggest ways to improve the production planning in order to facilitate the company’s production processes. This should be done in accordance with the LEAN concept. Today, ABB will produce two of the customers’ orders at the same time. To avoid major disturbances it is important to work with production planning to create a balanced production mix. During the planning it is important to consider that each order may create different “bottlenecks” in production line. Therefore, the aim of this project is to help ABB find an appropriate production mix with the incoming orders. Furthermore, the researchers have developed a tool which can facilitate the planning and make it easier and more sustainable. The production process has been carefully observed and the capacity has been calculated for each station. The production capacity included the capacity of each station within the production line but also information from previous time studies has been used during the research. The time studies have been performed by a consultant though because the production process has developed since these studies were performed, the information had to be updated. The updated information together with the calculated capacity of each station, have been used to create a spread sheet which can be used as a planning tool. Recommendations for future actions have been developed, with help from the analysis and conclusions. These recommendations will support ABB in their future work.