This examination paper is the final part of the three years long engineering education in industrial engineering and management, with focus on logistics and leadership, at the school of engineering in Jönköping.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the material flow method that is used at the time on an anonymous company and to study which opportunities and problems the company has while trying to become more efficient in its internal material flow process from the storage to the production area.

The current material flow system that the company uses from the storage to the production area is usable and the production is working with this system. The company sees potential in developing and becoming more efficient in the time used for material handling.  The tied up capital in the storages and the use of the floor area that is used, do also have potential in becoming more efficient according to the company.

The current material flow system from the storage to the production area was studied and mapped. Even the flow within the chosen production cell was studied. After these studies three possible vision opportunities were developed. The three vision opportunities were all focused on using batches in the production that were formed into the exact quantities needed to produce an order. How this kitting should be done was the difference between the vision opportunities.     

A simulation of the production with material kitted into the exact quantities required in the production cell where made, to see what possible gains and which losses that could occur with this new way of material handling. The results from this simulation and the knowledge that was given were among others the identification of a bottleneck in the production and diverse problems that could complicate a kitting of material. Further positive and negative effects of kitting are also reflected over in the report.

The simulation contributed, as said earlier, to the identification of a bottleneck in the production, but also to the discovery of how the order-batches from the customers have to be synchronized with the purchase-batches and the production-batches at the company. These results in relation to the theory part about kitting have lead forward to our suggestions of change and possible further work for the company and are seen under the final discussion part. These suggestions treat co-operation with suppliers’ synchronization of different batches and possible layout changes.