Optimising a Rebalancing Process : Understanding and improving balancing methods for an assembly process, for efficiency and improved work environment

Sammanfattning

Volvo’s production site in Braås produces articulated haulers with a takt-driven assembly line,which means that there needs to be balance between all assembly positions in order to maintainhigh efficiency. Volvo utilises continuous improvements to constantly improve layout, equipment, and the product itself, which together with a takt time that changes depending on themarket means that rebalancing of the assembly tasks is occurring frequently. When rebalancing, engineers, assemblers, production leaders, and others go through a rebalancing process to evaluate the new parameters and implement changes to the distribution of assembly tasks. This process, however, is one that presents operational and psychosocial challenges,and hence the purpose of this project is to map the current state of the process and pinpointinefficiencies and psychosocial stressors for the roles relevant to the process. To evaluate the rebalancing process, multiple employees from each relevant role have been interviewed and a questionnaire has been distributed to assemblers to understand the perspectivesof everyone involved. Significant insights were gathered from a reference group, mostly containing engineers that are working with balancing, and some engineers that used to work withit, to provide multiple perspectives. The gathered information was then analysed, resulting in visual figures to model different pointsof view, and show how the current rebalancing process is carried out, where the inefficiencieslie and how it affects the work environment for the involved employees. The main takeawaysare that the rebalancing process is currently unstructured and varies considerably between theoccurrences. The findings also reveal that the process loses performance due to what happensoutside it, for example how the data provided to the process is outdated. In addition to presentingconflicts like these, solutions to the issues have been proposed as a way to provide Volvo withstrategic recommendations on how to improve both their rebalancing process and the organisation around it.