Considering that the current technology is constantly improving, it becomes increasingly important to have an efficient logistics in a company to maintain profitability while achieving a competitive business. Efficient logistics may be accomplished by improving the internal materials handling. In this thesis the internal material handling of steel frames has been studied at a factory in Vaggeryd. The goal of this study is to investigate the problems that exist with the current production flow of products and provide suggestions on how it can be developed to reduce unnecessary handling and movement.

The study has a deductive approach where the authors has been using literature studies parallel with empirical analyzes conducted at a company to achieve the purpose of the study. Documentation from the company and interviews with staff and observations form the basis for the data collection carried out. Based on this choice of method, the authors have identified possible problems in the internal material handling at the company and by using well known theories they have accomplished a result.

The authors present the improvement proposals in two different ways. The first, specific suggestions, involving problems caused by different rates of operation times, poor communication between operations, poor designed production layout which leads to inefficient material handling of steel frames. These specific suggestions for improvement has led to the second, overall suggestions for improvement, which the authors presents a proposal for a new production layout.

The overall improvement proposed by the authors is to switch to a hybrid solution in terms of production system. Merging operations such as painting, installation and packaging in terms of a line, turns out to make the internal materials handling more efficient. Finally, the study ends with a discussion of the results and the method used in this thesis.