Level schedule implementation in unstable manufacturing environments

American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. (AAM), headquartered in Detroit (MI) is one of the major Tier 1 suppliers in the automotive industry. The main challenge in AAM plant 2 is production rate unstability due to downtime, quality, changeover and absenteeism issues. The company is currently making a major effort to reduce this unstability. This thesis describes some of the systems which have been implemented in order to improve the inventory management policy in this factory. The document is structured around three main topics: research on the operations and materials management policy in Plant 2, design of new lean management systems ( level scheduling and visual management) and design of new Operations Research-based production planning tools to coordinate multiple mixed model production lines in an unstable manufacturing environment. Special emphasis is placed on the role of execution for true improvement and the challenges faced by the implementation team in this initiative.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• López de Haro, Santiago

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Donald Rosenfield and Stanley Gershwin.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
• Sloan School of Management.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44453

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/44453