What you do today affects your business tomorrow. And on and on. Aritco Lift AB is a lift manufacturer that had the goal of removing bottlenecks in its production in order to increase capacity and enable a more efficient way of working. We were asked to implement TrakSYS for production management, so that the teams could monitor every step of the elevator assembly process. TrakSYS, which is the next generation MES/MOM platform with a modular functionality of monitoring, measurement, control, reporting and analysis, gives you all the tools to run your manufacturing operations as efficiently as possible. Coordination of activities, materials and information, so often a time waster, can now be managed efficiently and proactively from one platform. For increased productivity, quality and profitability. Smart, isn't it?
Improving stock and production management
In 1995, four engineers, all familiar with the elevator industry, decided it was time to shake things up. With the intention of creating smart, modern, economical lifts for homes and businesses, the four friends founded Aritco Lift AB (Aritco) - a company destined to take the lift industry to the next level. Having grown into a thriving business since then, Aritco's operations are now housed in a 16,000 sqm factory in Stockholm, where they produce 4,000 lifts per year, which are delivered to 40 different countries.
After winning several awards for their offerings, the team at Aritco realized that they needed to review their manufacturing processes. Understanding that implementing a Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) platform was the best way forward, the Aritco team approached us at Plantvision and based on their needs, TrakSYS from Parsec was recommended and implemented.
"After the deployment of TrakSYS, we have seen improvements in several processes, such as inventory management and order management. Although it is too early to verify our project KPIs for Incorrect Pick, as the lead times from delivered shipment to customer can be several months, we have already seen less reported incorrect picks internally, which is a huge improvement! We also see that we have much better insight into material shortages internally and improved productivity, especially for assembly and picking of spare parts", says Jonas Sjödahl, Chief Operating Officer & Vice President, Aritco.
Objectives
A key objective of the project was to increase the on-time, in-full completion of orders to 98%. This meant increasing order accuracy and ensuring that all appropriate parts and components were included in each completed package. Another goal was to optimize inventory management along with inventory processes, including cycle counting and variance reduction by 50%. There was also a focus on improving production processes with the goal of optimizing the quality of finished goods to reduce scrap and rework. In addition, whiteboards and paper for morning meetings would be replaced by TrakSYS dashboards and reports.
Challenges
At the beginning of the project, Aritco faced challenges in three areas. First, there was a lack of sufficient visibility on the shop floor. This resulted in incomplete orders being sent out, which affected customer satisfaction and was costly as it required Aritco to send out the missing components.
Not having a real-time inventory management solution was another major challenge, making it difficult to identify the quantities in stock and ensure that the number of components in stock was sufficient to meet customer orders. This led to production stoppages when assumed stock levels did not match actual stock levels.
Third, there was a lack of insight and visibility into production bottlenecks. This not only affected performance and limited capacity, but also prevented staff from identifying the root causes of production delays.
The solution
Together with our team, Aritco's production team worked to design and implement a TrakSYS launch that would help them optimize their inventory visibility and production processes. While their previous solution only told operators what materials were needed for an order, TrakSYS gave operators real-time insight into inventory levels and enabled a quality-assured and efficient GMP and FIFO approach.
We implemented TrakSYS for production management so that teams could monitor every step of the elevator assembly process. All this was done with the aim of removing production bottlenecks to increase capacity and enable Aritco to work as efficiently as possible.
Result
Aritco is already seeing many benefits from the new solution, which now makes it possible to combine data from different data sources and provide production staff with real-time insights. The company has been able to work towards its production targets as well as digitalize paper documents for morning meetings. One area where a clear improvement has already been seen is the reduction in stock-related production stoppages. Here, the introduction of reliable inventory reports has helped reduce production downtime from six days to two days per year.
We feel like fish in water when we have the opportunity to help our clients with their various challenges. With competence and close-knit teams, projects of this kind are exciting, interesting and developing. We thank Aritco for the assignment and look forward to continuing to follow their journey.
Does your company need help optimizing and streamlining production processes? Do not hesitate to contact one of our experts.
