Abstract

Manufacturing companies are currently performing on a global competitive market. In order to raise the grade of utilization, the time spent during a workday has to be spent more efficiently. If a product cycle time or throughput time can be diminished, the overall equipment effectiveness becomes far better. Due to high workforce costs, the western country manufacturing companies support a tremendous pressure to continuously improve operational efficiency and in this way keep competitive advantages intact. Short and stable throughput time is an important key performance indicator, which contributes to the competitiveness of the company by contributing to better on time delivery and associated economical effects.

 

Throughput time analysis is a great tool with multiple purposes and can play a major role within competition with other companies. The first objective of this paper is to perform a throughput time analysis and demonstrate the potential of focusing on throughput time when aiming for production system performance improvements. The second objective is to discuss promising areas to reduce and stabilize the throughput time in future production flow.

 

The conclusion of this thesis is that throughput time analysis is an excellent tool to identify problem areas in production systems, control improvement implementation and ultimately stabilize and reduce the total lead time. It is of vital importance for a company who wish to stay in front in a competitive business to start monitoring the throughput time on a more regular basis, identify the associated key performance indicators, and in that way be able to control the production flow in a more effective way.

 

Keywords