This Master's thesis deals with the optimization of the material flow between two areas of the production plant of the selected company. At the beginning of the thesis there is shown theoretical framework which is needed for subsequent analysis and determination of the proposals to improvement. In this part there is pointed out to the understanding of the process and the various concepts related to the process management. Furthermore, for the purposes of the application part there are selected and analyzed specific tools of lean manufacturing. These include for example the spaghetti diagram, the product / process matrix and the value stream mapping as the essential tool of this thesis. All this is complemented by ABC analysis. After that these methods are also applied in the practical part for solving the current project in the selected company. At first in solving the project there is dealt with the determination of the most problematic material flow between two areas of production plant. Then there is suggested the optimization solutions and all of this is also complemented by the economic evaluation of the whole project.

This diploma thesis deals with the optimization of production process at ADC Czech Republic s.r.o. Primarily, the method of Lean Six Sigma is used. The first part has a form of the literary study where individual methods used within the company are described. These are further applied in the practical part. The second part presents a brief introduction of the company including the production portfolio. The last part focuses on the practical solution of particular problems of two packaging lines aiming to increase the utilization. In the thesis, the DMAIC improvement cycle is employed.

The diploma thesis deals with the assessment of the reliability of processes at the packaging center in the company CommScope Czech Republic s.r.o. The first part of the work is research about options for quality management using ISO 9000 standards, but also TQM approaches. At the same time, methods and analytical techniques are discussed, which will be further used in the practical part of this thesis. The following section introduces CommScope Inc. and its main product - optical fiber. The practical part contains an introduction to the packaging center and its processes, it also describes the analysis of the reliability of the original state and proposals for corrective measures that were designed within the Kaizen event. The rest of the work is then devoted to the implementation of the proposed changes and their economic assessment. Finally, an evaluation of the methods used, the results achieved and other recommendations are given.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the material flow in a company located at the second stage of the supply. Material flow is monitored in terms of logistics. The focus becomes reducing production lead times due to optimized inventory. In the theoretical section briefly summarizes the nature of material flow and the means used to optimize inventory. The content of the practical part is a detailed conflict of manufacturing and non-manufacturing operations, which will be the basis for possible suggestions to improve all material flow.

Under senare år har Stora Enso sett en stadig och ökande efterfrågan. För att möjliggöra en ökad produktion framöver, ska en investering göras vid ena kartongmaskinen på Skoghalls bruk. En ökad produktion ställer krav på att det efterföljande flödet fungerar väl och idag, upplever företaget att dagens interna logistikflöde inte alltid fungerar problemfritt. För att öka förutsättningarna för att hantera produktionsökningen, finns det därför ett intresse av att undersöka aktiviteterna i det studerade flödet och se var slöseri uppstår för att kunna reducera eller eliminera dem. Syftet med studien är därmed; Ta fram rekommenderade åtgärdsförslag för hur aktiviteterna i Skoghalls bruks internlogistik kan effektiviseras. Studien utgick ifrån tre huvudfrågor: Vilka slöserier finns det kopplat till brukslagret och Vänerterminalen och var förekommer dem?, Vilka åtgärdsförslag finns för de identifierade slöserierna? och Vilka av de identifierade åtgärdsförslagen rekommenderas för Skoghalls bruk?. Den första huvudfrågan besvarades genom att en kartläggning av nuläget gjordes med inspiration från de två första stegen av en värdeflödesanlys och ett spagettidiagram. Kartläggningen baserades på intervjuer, observationer och datainsamling som genomfördes på såväl brukslagret som Vänerterminalen. Intervjuerna genomfördes med anställda som antingen arbetade operativt eller administrativt i brukslagret och Vänerterminalen, för att få en heltäckande bild över hur aktiviteterna genomfördes och var slöserier uppstår i aktiviteterna. Utifrån informationsinsamlningen togs sju födeskartor fram som innehöll tidsmätningar för de olika aktiviteterna. Baserat på kartläggningen och sammanställningen av informationsinsamlingen identifierades slöserier kopplat till aktiviteterna. Totalt identifierades fem olika typer av slöserier vilka var: onödig transport, defekta produkter, onödig rörelse, väntan och lager. För att besvara den andra huvudfrågan genomfördes först en rotorsaksanalys, med hjälp av metoderna 5 varför och fiskbensdiagram, där rotorsakerna till slöserierna identifierades. Baserat på rotorsakerna, togs nio åtgärdsförslag fram som ämnade reducera slöserierna och därmed effektivisera aktiviteterna i det studerade systemet. Slutligen besvarades den sista huvudfrågan med hjälp av ett insats-verkan diagram där åtgärdsförslag rekommenderades utifrån förväntad effekt och insats. Baserat på förväntad effekt respektive insats definierades åtgärdsförslagen som genomförbar, möjlig, överväga och avfärda. Sammanfattningsvis beslutades fyra åtgärdsförslag som genomförbara vilka rekommenderades i första hand. Vidare beslutades tre åtgärdsförslag som möjliga vilket innebär en lägre effekt än de genomförbara och de rekommenderas därför i andra hand. Två åtgärdsförslag beslutades för att övervägas, vilka kännetecknas av både en hög insats och effekt och rekommenderas därför till att undersökas vidare för att se om insatsen kan reduceras innan åtgärdsförslaget blir aktuellt. Inget åtgärdsförslag bedömdes ha så pass låg effekt i kombination med hög insats att det bör avfärdas. I figur 1 nedan ses en sammanställning av de framtagna åtgärdsförslagen. / In recent years, Stora Enso has seen steady and increasing demand. To enable increased production in the future, an investment will be made in one of the board machines at Skoghall Mill. Increased production requires that the subsequent flow works well, and today the company has expressed that the current internal logistics flow does not always work smoothly. In order to increase the conditions for managing the increase in production, there is an interest in investigating the activities in the studied flow. This is to see where waste occur in order to reduce or eliminate them. The purpose of the study is thus; To provide recommended suggestions for how the activities in Skoghall Mill’s internal logistics can be made more efficient. The study was based on three different main questions: What wastes are there linked to the mill warehouse and V¨anerterminalen and where do they occur?, What suggestions are proposed for the identified wastes? and Which of the identified suggestions are recommended for Skoghall mill?. The first main question was answered by mapping the current situation with inspiration from the first two steps of a value stream mapping and a spaghetti diagram. The mapping was based on the interviews, observations, and data collection conducted at both the mill warehouse and V¨anerterminalen during the implementation phase. The interviews were conducted with employees who worked either operationally or administratively in the mill warehouse and V¨anerterminalen, to get a comprehensive picture of how the activities were carried out and where waste occurs in the activities. Based on the collected information, seven flow maps were produced that contained time measurements for the different activities. Based on the mapping and the collected information, wastes linked to different activities were identified. A total of five different wastes were identified which were:transportation, defects, motion, waiting and inventory. To answer the second main question, a root cause analysis was first carried out, using the 5 why and fishbone diagram methods, where the root causes of the wastes were identified. Based on the root causes, nine proposed suggestions were developed that aimed to reduce waste and thus make the activities in the studied system more efficient. Finally, the last main question was answered using an impact-effort diagram where recommended suggestions were presented based on expected impact and effort. Based on expected impact and effort the proposed suggestions were defined as feasible, possible, consider and reject. To summarise, four proposed suggestions were decided to be feasible and recommended in the first instance. In addition, three proposed suggestions were identified as possible, which means a lower impact than the feasible ones, and are therefore recommended in the second place. Two proposed suggestions were decided to be considered, and these proposed suggestions are characterised by both a high effort and impact and are therefore recommended to be investigated further to see if the effort can be reduced before the proposed suggestion becomes relevant. No proposed suggestion was judged to have such a low impact in combination with high effort that it should be dismissed. Figure 2 below shows a summary of the proposed suggestions.

Ensemble simulation is a commonly used technique in operational forecasting of weather and floods. Multi-member ensemble output is usually large, multivariate, and challenging to interpret interactively. Forecast meteorologists and hydrologists are interested in understanding the uncertainties associated with the simulation; specifically variability between the ensemble members. The visualization of ensemble members is currently accomplished through spaghetti plots or hydrographs. To improve visualization techniques and tools for forecasters, we conducted a userstudy to evaluate the effectiveness of existing uncertainty visualization techniques on 1D and 2D synthetic datasets. We designed an uncertainty evaluation framework to enable easier design of such studies for scientific visualization. The techniques evaluated are errorbars, scaled size of glyphs, color-mapping on glyphs, and color-mapping of uncertainty on the data surface. Although we did not find a consistent order among the four techniques for all tasks, we found that the efficiency of techniques used highly depended on the tasks being performed. Errorbars consistently underperformed throughout the experiment. Scaling the size of glyphs and color-mapping of the surface performed reasonably well. With results from the user-study, we iteratively developed a tool named ‘Noodles’ to interactively explore the ensemble uncertainty in weather simulations. Uncertainty was quantified using standard deviation, inter-quartile range, width of the 95% confidence interval, and by bootstrapping the data. A coordinated view of ribbon and glyph-based uncertainty visualization, spaghetti plots, and data transect plots was provided to two meteorologists for expert evaluation. They found it useful in assessing uncertainty in the data, especially in finding outliers and avoiding the parametrizations leading to these outliers. Additionally, they could identify spatial regions with high uncertainty thereby determining poorly simulated storm environments and deriving physical interpretation of these model issues. We also describe uncertainty visualization capabilities developed for a tool named ‘FloodViz’ for visualization and analysis of flood simulation ensembles. Simple member and trend plots and composited inundation maps with uncertainty are described along with different types of glyph based uncertainty representations. We also provide feedback from a hydrologist using various features of the tool from an operational perspective.

Stadium AB prognostiserar en markant försäljningsökning av specialtryckt sportklädsel. För- säljningsplanen ställer högre krav på företagets avdelning Solutions, vars lokaler huserar tryc- keriet samt dess stöttande logistik. Lokalerna anas redan nu börja närma sig gränsen för antal ordrar de kan hantera, samtidigt som man tror att det befintliga processer innehåller slöse- rier av resurser. Därmed krävs en genomlysning av nuläget för att identifiera och eliminera slöserier, för att utnyttja befintliga faciliteter på bästa sätt. Studiens syfte blir därmed:  Utföra en flödesanalys av Stadiums Solutions verksamhet för att sedan ta fram förbättringsförslag för avdelningens logistikflöde.  Syftet bröts ner till två olika huvudfrågor som arbetet sedan har utgått från. Huvudfrågorna som togs fram är följande: Vilka slöserier kan identifieras i Stadium Solutions nuvarande lo- gistikflöde? och Vilka förbättringar rekommenderas till Stadium Solutions nuvarande logistik- flöde?. Innan arbetet med huvudfrågorna påbörjades genomfördes en förstudie som syftade till att framställa korrekta processkartor för alla delar av Stadium Solutions flöde. Dessa kartor var nödvändiga för att påbörja arbetet med huvudfrågorna.  Den första huvudfrågan besvarades med hjälp av värdeflödesanalys och spaghettidiagram. Totalt framställdes fyra spaghettidiagram, medan värdeflödesanalysen resulterade i fyra flö- deskartor. Dessa togs fram med hjälp av observationer i form av tidmätningar, intervjuer samt dokumentinsamling. Utifrån dessa flödeskartor och spaghettidiagram klassificerades varje ak- tivitet och lagring som antingen “Värdeskapande aktivitet”, “Hjälpaktivitet” eller “Muda”. Se- dan studerades vissa aktiviteter vidare för att identifiera slöserier. Totalt kunde tre kategorier av slöseri identifieras: Köer, Onödig lagerhållning och Onödiga transporter.  Den andra huvudfrågan utgick sedan från de framtagna slöserierna och besvarandet inleddes med hjälp av en rotorsaksanalys av slöserierna där fiskbensdiagram och metoden 5-varför har använts. För de rotorsaker som identifierades togs förbättringsförslag fram som ämnade att minska slöserierna och på så sätt öka antalet ordrar som Stadium Solutions kan hantera. Ett insats/effekt-diagram användes för att bedöma förbättringsförslagens effekt och vilken insats som krävs för att införa dem och således kunna dela in dem som “Genomföra”, “Över- väga”, “Undersöka” eller “Avfärda”. Tre förbättringsförslag delades in som “Genomföra” och ges därför högsta prioritering. Ett förslag hamnade på “Överväga” som får andra prioritering och ett förslag i “Undersöka” som får tredje prioritering. / Stadium AB predicts a significant increase in sales of custom-printed sportswear. The sales plan imposes tougher requirements on the company’s Solutions department, whose premises contain the printing and the supporting logistics. These premises are believed to approach capacity for the number of orders than can be shipped, while it is believed that the existing processes contain waste of resources. Therefore, a thorough examination of the current situation is required to identify and eliminate waste, in order to utilize existing facilities to the best advantage. The purpose of the study is thus:  Conduct a flow analysis of Stadium’s Solutions operations to then develop improvement proposals for the department’s logistics flow.  The purpose was broken down into two main questions, which are as follows: What waste can be identified in Stadium Solutions’ current logistics flow? and What improvements are recommended for Stadium Solutions’ current logistics flow? Before work on the main questions began, a preliminary study was conducted aiming to produce accurate process maps for all parts of Stadium Solutions’ flow, which were necessary to continue the study.  The first main question was answered using value-stream mapping and spaghetti diagrams. In total, four spaghetti diagrams were produced, and the value-stream mapping resulted in four current state maps. These were made utilizing observations in the form of time measurements, interviews, and document collection. Based on these current state maps and spaghetti diagrams, each activity and storage was classified as either “Value-Adding”,“Auxiliary”, or “Muda” (waste). Certain activities were then further studied to identify the specific waste they caused. In total, three types of waste were identified: Queues, Excessive Inventory, and Unnecessary Transport.  For the second main question, a root cause analysis was done for the identified waste using fishbone diagrams and the 5-why method. Suggestions were developed with the the root causes identified, aiming to reduce waste and thus increase the number of orders that Stadium Solutions can handle. An Input/output diagram was used to assess the effect of the suggestions and the effort required to implement them, thus categorizing them as either “Implement”, “Consider”,“Investigate”, or “Dismiss”. Three suggestions were categorized as “Implement” and therefore given the highest priority. One suggestion fell under “Consider”, receiving second priority, and one suggestion under “Investigate”, receiving third priority.

The global market is very competitive due to fast changes in complex business environments and to survive or expand the business, organizations must embrace organizational change. However, adapting to change is not always easy, where organizations may experience obstacles and resistance along the way. Organizations may also experience that it is very hard to implement lean successfully, due to lack of know-how but especially resistance. The traditional way is to blame the blue-collars for the disturbing circumstances but in modern times the wind has changed its course where the managers themselves can be a contributor for implementation failures. Therefore, the aim of the research is to investigate what advantages that can be obtained by implementing a certain change initiative. Furthermore, to determine where resistance occurs and how to eliminate or reduce them. The change initiative in this research is implemented by conducting a case study in a Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs), where the main goal is to reduce the changeover time of a machine, by finding improvement suggestions using the Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) methodology. The results generated several improvement opportunities and gave an indication that there is a huge potential for improvements and elimination of waste during a typical changeover. The positive outcomes of implementing these improvement opportunities could theoretically reduce the changeover time, which directly reduces the overall cost but higher responsiveness, flexibility and efficiency can also be obtained. However, the evidence tells a story where the organization could experience obstacles during the implementation of the improvement suggestions, due to several factors. Surprisingly, the evidence points out that one root problem for resistance is difficulties of describing the underlying reason of the change initiative to the blue-collars. Moreover, there is in fact resistance and lack of awareness of the SMED methodology among the blue-collars and the managers, where fear of the unknown is another root problem for resistance.

The goal of this diploma thesis is to use the principles of lean manufacturing to lean workplace and eliminate all forms of waste in this workplace. A part of this work is opti-mal design of the workplace in terms of ergonomics which should have a positive effect on shortening lead time and process cycle efficiency. Shortening the lead time will allow company to respond more quickly to customer requirements and this effect may subsequently lead to the drop in inventories.

Die Herstellung keramischer Filter für den Einsatz in der Eisen- und Stahlschmelzfiltration ist mittels viskoplastischer Formgebung möglich. Es wurden keine Trägermaterialien verwendet und weitestgehend wurde ohne Zusatz organischer Additive gearbeitet. Wesentliche Ziele der Anwendung dieser Technologie waren dabei eine Festigkeitssteigerung gegenüber herkömmlichen Schaumkeramikfiltern, da keine Hohlstege, sondern Vollstrukturen erzeugt werden und die Kostenreduzierung der Gesamtbilanz, da der Brennprozess günstiger wird (es werden keine Filteranlagen mehr benötigt) und Kosten für Schäume entfallen. Eine entsprechende Struktur kann mit der Kolbenpresse in Form von ungeordneten Strängen erzeugt werden - die so genannten Spaghettifilter. Die Auswertung der Gussstücke aus Gießversuchen mit Eisenschmelze wurde mittels 3D-CT Röntgentomographie durchgeführt. Der Filtrationswirkungsgrad der Schaumfilter ist nach dieser Methode höher als der der Spaghettifilter. Die 3D CT Röntgentomographie kommt eventuell als eine einfache und zerstörungsfreie Methode zur Beurteilung der Filtrationswirkung in Frage. Das Anlegen einer Spannung im System Filter / Schmelze zeigt nach ersten Versuchen chancenreiche Ergebnisse. Durch den Polarisationseffekt kann eine Erhöhung der Abscheideeffizienz bei Schaumkeramikfiltern erreicht werden kann. Die Spaghettifilter zeigen keine Erhöhung durch spannungsunterstützte Filtration.