External kanban systems in automotive assembly

Abstract

For the past two decades, rising customer expectations and increased global competition have forced automotive manufacturers around the world to significantly improve the efficiency of their production operations. One critical area of improvement has been in external logistics, logistics involving shipment of materials from external suppliers to final assembly plants. This thesis focuses on potential cost savings and procedural improvements from the implementation of kanban systems for external logistics. These are called external kanban systems. This analysis covers many facets of external kanban systems, including their benefits over traditional external logistics systems, their impact on transportation methods, their effect on inventories, and their and their anticipated effect on organizational learning in the final assembly plant. This project was pursued to reduce the cost and improve the reliability of external logistics at Ford Motor Company's Saarlouis Assembly Plant (Ford-Saarlouis). At Ford-Saarlouis, the implementation of these external kanban systems served as a critical portion of the replenishment process, as a training tool to familiarize plant employees with kanban systems, and as a template for future external logistics improvements.