An Evaluation of Kitting Systems in Lean Production

Dedication This thesis work is dedicated to my mother E. Gülay, father M. Hilmi, and sister A. Özge whose sacrifices, which were realized by our loss of precious time together , were the most painful and yearning for me. I have felt their true love, trust and support with me throughout my entire life. Without them I could not be the person I am. Acknowledgement This master thesis was carried out at the department of Transportation and Logistics in Chalmers University of Technology to complete my MSc. Degree in Logistics in Högskolan I Borås. I have special thanks to my supervisor Christian Finnsgård from Chalmers University of Technology for supporting me with his knowledge and experience in the logistics area as well as encouraging and keeping me motivated at all times with his positive mood. I have also special thanks to Lars Medbo for sharing his valuable ideas and guiding me to reach a distinguishable result in my research. Besides, I would like to thank Henrik Brynzer, Peter Friberg and Sebastian Numler for cooperation and helping me with their challenging ideas. I feel this thesis work has been very informative for me and helped me to broaden my knowledge and experience in the area. I am totally sure that I will be able to benefit from this thesis in my future career. Abstract One of the key decisions for every assembly line is the decision about the materials feeding system which means the method of supplying materials to the operators. This decision affects all of the other activities performed as well as the performance of the assembly line. In the industry, kitting is practiced as a method of materials feeding among others such as continuous supply, batching and sequencing. Kitting is the name for the practice of feeding components and subassemblies to the assembly line in predetermined quantities that are placed together in specific containers. In the industry kitting activities are used to solve the issues of: • Lack of space • Quality • Flexibility • Materials Handling • Learning Kitting shows numerous benefits in all of five tracks if applied properly. Drawbacks of kitting are mostly caused by wrongly prepared kits, kitting too much or unnecessary parts. It is important to include all five of these aspects in business cases before the implementation of kitting, otherwise kitting activities are likely to cause further problems. The main reason for kitting …