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The Kenworth chassis project group was first assigned to investigate the problems that were occurring at the chassis paint booths. Because of our strict time constraints we would not have enough time to solve this problem; therefore, Kenworth gave us the opportunity to choose our own topic.
After meeting with several Kenworth managers, we finally decided to investigate three of the stations that are part of the initial chassis assembly. Specifically, these stations include the fold station through the torque station.
Initially a significant amount of time was spent observing, learning, and understanding the processes and procedures that the assembly line workers perform at these stations. It was determined that we could focus on several issues. Inventory management, developing a new storage system, improving ergonomics and safety issues are some of the issues that we considered. After careful analysis we narrowed our project goal to recommending a new inventory storage system. We chose this as our focus because we discovered that the current inventory storage system is the root of several other problems include excess walking distances, under-utilization inventory storage system, and ergonomics issues associated with carrying heavy parts long distances.
We felt that if we could improve the current storage system utilization we could also make recommendations that would help improve ergonomics, time efficiency, waste removal, cost reduction and safety.
After extensive research and data analysis, we determined our final recommendation, which consists of the following three components:
Ultimately these recommendations help the assembly line workers be more time efficiency and help improve their working conditions. These improvements also decrease Kenworth�s current operating costs and increase their utilization.