Applicazione di tecniche di Value Stream Mapping per l’industria manifatturiera

In questo articolo si descrive l’applicazione di tecniche di Value Stream Mapping (VSM) ad una importante azienda operante nel settore dello stampaggio di materie plastiche. In particolare l’analisi è incentrata sull’introduzione di una nuova tecnologia per diminuire la percentuale di difettosità negli indicatori digit display utilizzati negli elettrodomestici bianchi. l’analisi viene svolta effettuando una mappatura dell’attuale sistema di produzione che permette di evidenziare i punti critici del sistema. In una seconda fase viene valutata l’introduzione di alcune modifiche al sistema di produzione dei digit dispaly il cui effetto è stato analizzato attraverso l’uso di un software VSM. I risultati ottenuti hanno evidenziato una riduzione del tempo di produzione dei lotti di digit, un calo del loro costo unitario di produzione ed un incremento del livello di conformità del prodotto

DEVELOPMENT OF A SUSTAINABLE PRODUCT LIFECYCLE IN MANUFACTURING FIRMS: A CASE STUDY

This study discusses a methodology for integrating Design for Environment (DfE) and life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques both into new product development and into the process of redesigning a set of existing products. The article explains the reasons for developing DfE in general, and pays particular attention to a specific, chosen product, a class of electrical distribution boards, to illustrate the concept. The main process steps in the development of the DfE are outlined, and the development of a LCA that satisfies the requirements of the ISO 14040 standard is illustrated. A major benefit of the DfE methodology proposed in this work is the possibility to use LCA data both during new product development and when modifying old products, with the aim of continuously reducing the overall environmental impact of products during their life cycle. This improvement cycle begins with the attempt to find new design solutions (for assembly and set-up in the case of electrical distribution boards), continues with the calculation of the enviromental break even point (BEP) and with the assessment of the BEP for the expenses incurred by the client. On the basis of these calculations and bearing in mind the technical specifications required by the clients and the work environment in which the product will be used, the designers will be able to make the most efficient choices from both the environmental and the economic point of view

Re-engineering the forecasting phase using traditional and soft computing methods

The aim of the work is verifying the possibility of extrapolating information on demand trends, for a company specialized in the production of aluminium tins, using the data collected in previous periods. This study is mainly divided into three stages: (1) data pre-processing (data collection) stage, (2) adaptive network evaluating stage and (3) forecast and recall stage. At the stage of data collection, the data are divided into four categories: time serial data, macroeconomic data, downstream production demand data and industrial production data. The company analysed in this work usually carried out the prediction activities by means of expert judgement. In the case analyzed, four models were developed in order to predict the monthly number of tins: three traditional methods based on historical series and neural networks. Soft computing models were compared with traditional prediction models. Particularly the Holt-Winters forecasting method was tested developing a model that take into account seasonal phenomena

SUPPLY CHAIN MODELLING AND MANAGING, USING TIMED COLORED PETRI NETS: A CASE STUDY

This paper aims at developing a new methodology for designing and managing a supply chain (SC) and, at the same time, for evaluating the performance of every stakeholder involved in a production chain. The methodology proposed has been applied to a footwear supply chain and is based on coloured Petri nets (CPNs). The supply chain analysed in this paper is a complex production system consisting of a network of manufacturers and service suppliers related to logistics systems that provide transportation and storage. The model developed uses coloured, timed Petri nets to represent a supply chain and it is such that resources are the Petri Net (PN) places, the tokens are jobs, orders and/or products, while the colours represent job attributes. These colours are used to encode different data types and values that are attached to tokens. A “coloured token” represents a specific production order or a certain amount of a particular material supplied. Thus, it can be processed in different ways and it can be easily localised within the CPN model. The use of coloured Petri nets allows companies to create a compact representation of states, actions and events of the modelled system. The particular structure of this network allows the designers the easy realisation of a simulator using an “object-oriented”, dedicated programming, which is a useful tool for developing what-if analyses

Applicazione di tecniche di Value Stream Mapping per l’industria manifatturiera

In questo articolo si descrive l’applicazione di tecniche di Value Stream Mapping (VSM) ad una importante azienda operante nel settore dello stampaggio di materie plastiche. In particolare l’analisi è incentrata sull’introduzione di una nuova tecnologia per diminuire la percentuale di difettosità negli indicatori digit display utilizzati negli elettrodomestici bianchi. l’analisi viene svolta effettuando una mappatura dell’attuale sistema di produzione che permette di evidenziare i punti critici del sistema. In una seconda fase viene valutata l’introduzione di alcune modifiche al sistema di produzione dei digit dispaly il cui effetto è stato analizzato attraverso l’uso di un software VSM. I risultati ottenuti hanno evidenziato una riduzione del tempo di produzione dei lotti di digit, un calo del loro costo unitario di produzione ed un incremento del livello di conformità del prodotto