Effects of using minomi in lineside materials supply

Paper in proceeding, 2008

Minomi is a concept for handling and presenting parts without containers within lineside materials supply. Hence, instead of being handled in boxes, bins, etc, parts are resting on small fixtures, hanging from hooks, or simply handled individually or in stacks. This paper reports of four case studies from an automobile assembly plant, where the effects of introducing minomi have been studied. The results of the case studies indicate that the effects of introducing minomi can be very divergent depending on the aim and the settings of the introduction. Reduced space requirements by the receiving assembly operations, which in turn can increase flexibility for volume and mix variations, were observed in three of the four case studies. The time efficiency of the materials supply operations was however affected in different directions in the different case studies, and this performance measure seems highly dependant on the specific settings of the minomi introduction.