<p>This master thesis was carried out at ELFA, one of the largest catalogue distributors of electronics in northern Europe. ELFA offers a wide selection of products such as measuring instruments, fuses and screwdrivers. </p><p>The master thesis handles the possibilities of an increase in the internal flow of products. The background to this problem is ELFA’s acquisition of two new companies, which brought the product range in the warehouse from 55 000 to 80 000 products. This increase brought a bigger flow through all the functions of the company. To be able to keep the expense at today’s level, an increase in capacity was wished for, without any increase in workforce, which resulted in that the efficiency had to increase. While mapping the flow, the function for unpacking and registering of the goods was discovered to be the bottleneck of the flow and therefore focus was set on this part for a deeper mapping. The goods deliveries to ELFA are uneven, not only between days but also during the hours of the day. This causes problem when there during some periods are overcapacity and during other are there not enough capacity to be able to keep the goals that are set. Making better use of the available capacity in the unpacking function is thus necessary. It is therefore important to even out the flow. </p><p>The analysis of the bottleneck resulted in a couple of proposals for improvement. These include higher demands on suppliers and proposals for a better use of the capacity in the bottleneck. The higher demands on suppliers mainly address their packing and marking of their products. To that comes demands on suppliers to deliver in a smaller delivery window and more accurate deliveries in time. The suggestions for even out the flow mainly consist of making the selection process of products with shortage better to be able to make a separate buffer for these products. These would then be taken care of before the products without a shortage. The other buffer, with products without a shortage, would fill the purpose of even out the flow. In addition, other smaller proposals have also been presented in the purpose of increasing the capacity. If the proposals that have been presented are carried out in full, the writers believe that a significant increase in the capacity is possible and will solve the problems that today limits ELFA in their work.</p>

This master thesis was carried out at ELFA, one of the largest catalogue distributors of electronics in northern Europe. ELFA offers a wide selection of products such as measuring instruments, fuses and screwdrivers. The master thesis handles the possibilities of an increase in the internal flow of products. The background to this problem is ELFA’s acquisition of two new companies, which brought the product range in the warehouse from 55 000 to 80 000 products. This increase brought a bigger flow through all the functions of the company. To be able to keep the expense at today’s level, an increase in capacity was wished for, without any increase in workforce, which resulted in that the efficiency had to increase. While mapping the flow, the function for unpacking and registering of the goods was discovered to be the bottleneck of the flow and therefore focus was set on this part for a deeper mapping. The goods deliveries to ELFA are uneven, not only between days but also during the hours of the day. This causes problem when there during some periods are overcapacity and during other are there not enough capacity to be able to keep the goals that are set. Making better use of the available capacity in the unpacking function is thus necessary. It is therefore important to even out the flow. The analysis of the bottleneck resulted in a couple of proposals for improvement. These include higher demands on suppliers and proposals for a better use of the capacity in the bottleneck. The higher demands on suppliers mainly address their packing and marking of their products. To that comes demands on suppliers to deliver in a smaller delivery window and more accurate deliveries in time. The suggestions for even out the flow mainly consist of making the selection process of products with shortage better to be able to make a separate buffer for these products. These would then be taken care of before the products without a shortage. The other buffer, with products without a shortage, would fill the purpose of even out the flow. In addition, other smaller proposals have also been presented in the purpose of increasing the capacity. If the proposals that have been presented are carried out in full, the writers believe that a significant increase in the capacity is possible and will solve the problems that today limits ELFA in their work.