In industry today, the need for excellent product development and realization in many different aspects is increasing. This calls for excellent quality, while at the same time time-to-market is increasingly important.
A concurrent engineering (CE) approach is directed towards simultaneously developing different aspects of product realization in order to enhance both quality and speed. This thesis deals with the internal materials supply system (MSS) from a CE approach.
Logistics aspects are often not dealt with until later stages of development, which leads to limitations in the possible solutions for the MSS. While designing a new production system, including MSS aspects early on in the project implies stating at an early stage what is required by the system. In order to aid the development of such requirements, this thesis aims at suggesting a structure for the requirements on the MSS where the relevant stakeholders of the system are involved. The thesis results are achieved through literature reviews and a case study at a manufacturing company in the automotive industry
Through literature reviews the thesis suggests a four-level hierarchic approach to requirements, considering four levels: stakeholder level, system level, sub system level and component level. This approach is supported by the case study, where stakeholders and requirements are analyzed and content and important aspects for the requirements specification in a current product realization project are considered. Through the case study, the thesis suggests a view of MSS stakeholders and a two-part structure for MSS requirements with a requirements specification matrix and a tree diagram. The requirements specification matrix contains the four suggested levels, where twelve different requirement categories are considered on each level. The stakeholder level considers the stakeholder requirements, which are translated into requirements on the system.
The thesis results are considered to have the possibility of aiding the inclusion of MSS aspects at an early stage of product realization, and many different aspects are considered through the inclusion of all the relevant stakeholders in the study. The results are expected to be applicable in many different contexts. However, this need to be examined further and also the robustness of the results need to be established through further studies.
Source: Jönköping University
Authors: Brynning, Nicklas | Kihlström, Joakim