Production line optimization in an engineering to order business (Petrochemical industry) using value-stream mapping method

The work is focused on the valve's spare part (for petrochemical plant application) production line optimization using the Value-Stream Mapping method. Output of this production process is the so-called "trim pack", an assembly composed by stem, disc, orifice plate, and guides. First step is based on the study of the Current State Map which represents a material and information flow mapping. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are used for each valve's trim item considering all the production phases such as tooling lead time, semi-finished products queue, information transfer among departments, workflows, production lead time. This procedure allows drawing a map where cycle times, distances, movements (material and people), and waiting times are highlighted in order to identify and reduce the wastes (Transportation, Inventory, Movements, Waitings, Overprocess, Overproduction, Defects). Second step is the definition of eight new possible production line configurations (Future State Maps) with the aim of reducing or eliminating the Non-Adding Value activities. Then, a Decision Matrix has been used to evaluate and compare each solution proposed highlighting that two of them showed significant improvements since they obtained the highest scores. On the basis of the two best solutions, a ninth was defined as their combination, which includes the improvements produced by each of them. Finally, an economic analysis has been carried out. This analysis showed that it is possible to obtain an improvement in the layout which generates considerable reductions in terms of times and goods handling or human resources and, consequently, a large reduction of production costs even without processing technology modification.