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Digital Library

of the European Council for Modelling and Simulation

 

Title:

A Simulation Framework To Help In Lean Manufacturing Initiatives

Authors:

Fernando Sevillano, Miguel Serna, Marta Beltrán, Antonio Guzmán

Published in:

 

(2011).ECMS 2011 Proceedings edited by: T. Burczynski, J. Kolodziej, A. Byrski, M. Carvalho. European Council for Modeling and Simulation. doi:10.7148/2011 

 

ISBN: 978-0-9564944-2-9

 

25th European Conference on Modelling and Simulation,

Jubilee Conference

Krakow, June 7-10, 2011

 

Citation format:

Sevillano, F., Serna, M., Beltran, M., & Guzman, A. (2011). A Simulation Framework To Help In Lean Manufacturing Initiatives. ECMS 2011 Proceedings edited by: T. Burczynski, J. Kolodziej, A. Byrski, M. Carvalho (pp. 304-310). European Council for Modeling and Simulation. doi:10.7148/2011-0304-0310

DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/10.7148/2011-0304-0310

Abstract:

Lean Manufacturing initiatives try to understand where the sources of waste are in a manufacturing process in order to minimize or avoid them and to add value to the stakehold- ers. The improvement actions related to lean methods are always incremental, fast and easy; mainly based on peo- ple’s experience and on simple tools. For example, a Value Stream Map (VSM) is created to have a visual representa- tion of the material and information ¤ows involved in the production process, allowing improvement teams to detect where is the waste introduced and where is the value added.

The integration of simulation with VSM could consider- ably improve the results obtained in lean projects, helping the decision makers in adding dynamic information to the usually considered static pictures of the processes. The in- formation obtained from what-if simulations allows to de- tect improvement opportunities, to prioritize them, to an- alyze the best implementation alternative, and to quantify the possible bene£ts of the proposed actions.

This work presents the LeanSim framework, an easy to use tool based on Matlab and Simulink, capable of inte- grating a lean method such as VSM with simulation. Fur- thermore, a case study of an improvement project at a milk production plant is presented to illustrate the utilization of this new framework on a real environment.

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