| Summary: | This work is the final part of the Master of Science degree in Industrial Design Engineering towards Production Design, at Luleå University of Technology. This project has been conducted during the spring of 2017 at Alimak Hek. The task has been to analyze material handling, material presentation and why material shortages occur at the industrial hoists final assembly stations. To get an understanding of the system, interviews and observations were conducted. A literature study was carried out to find current knowledge and different solutions. To involve the workers in the process and to check if the problems were understood correctly a workshop was conducted. This was also an opportunity to discuss desired future state and ideas with the workers. Another way to look at potential solutions was through the benchmarkings. These were both conducted internally and at other companies where different solutions for material handling was studied. The material in focus has been fastening material. This was stored in bins at racks. These racks were placed at the assembly stations and the two big racks have been the focus of this project. The problems at these storages has been that the refilling did not work as it was supposed to. The old system was an order list with which material could be ordered from the main storage at Alimak, this however is not used any more. The system of today is that the empty bins are collected and put on a pallet to be sent to the main storage for refilling. The problem with this is that the workers did not take the bins when they were empty but rather went to a different storage to look there. This meant that the material sometimes got totally emptied at all racks before the bins were sent to refilling. This made for urgent needs where workers had to go to the storage themselves to get something refilled. Another problem was that these storages were placed behind the fixed stations which made them hard to get to and see. The bins used in today’s system were not all marked the same way and an ...
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