Information flow improvement through lean thinking : a real case in an Italian company

The study is concerned with a real-life information flow improvement problem, in which the analyst strives for generating solutions in an Italian company producing machines for steel construction and forging industry in Gazzada Schianno, Italy with three additional plants nearby. The company is a non-repetitive company and it has a factory that provides and distributes products thanks more than 100 agents across the world. The problem involves producing solutions for three sub-problems which are missing items before picking, missing information before assembly and missing information before test. For the problems, aims are increasing availability of the items and having maximum 2% of missing items before picking and eliminating missing information before starting assembly and test respectively. Currently, some solutions are suggested and implemented following A3 methodology and adapting lean thinking to the problem solving. A controlled stock program has been developed to monitor number of missing items and two check sheets are implemented to eliminate missing information before starting assembly. Check sheets were implemented for four weeks before finalizing the project and results were collected for eight machines. In total, availability of three different documents analysed for each check sheet. As a result, 95.83% availability of the documents were provided. Moreover, a study for forecasting of target achievement was done for missing items before picking and missing information before test. The solutions were verified and validate by the analyst of the company. I believe that this study can become highly attractive for further applications in the industry.