Vehicle Manufacturing – Paint Line Process Improvement

Posted on July 30, 2013

Our Client was expanding their paint line and required facility planning for warehouse design, workstation layout, and capacity analysis.

Reason for Project:

  • An outside engineering consulting group was contracted to provide the details and drawings for the expansion for the new paint line system and looked to Epicenter to identify and quantify problems to enable areas of improvement using IE tools.

Project Deliverables:

  • Validate the existing future state design.
    • Identify any critical flaws with the current layout and approach.
    • Generate detailed workstation layouts.
    • Determine HMI screen contents and operator interactions.
  • Establish plan for the storage and flow of raw materials.
    • Raw materials warehouse size, layout and storage type.
    • Flow of materials from warehouse to the line.
    • Validate FG storage area footprint.
  • Provide recommendations to the Client that can be implemented immediately.

Project Results/Benefits:

  • Workstation Layout: Redesigned layouts and flow between departments for high level capacities through 2017. Employed ergonomic principles to manage safe working conditions.
  • Warehousing Improvement: Design of raw material and finished goods storage, utilizing annual capacity levels from 2013 to 2017.
  • Achievement of Capacity: Upon correcting the identified problems the system would be capable of operating to the designed capacity.