IMPLEMENTATION OF FACTORY-IN-FACTORY (FIF) PRODUCTION SYSTEM IN A SMALL MEDIUM AUTOMOTIVE COMPANY

Abstract

In this thesis, a new concept of production system model called Factory-in­F actory (FiF) has been developed and iplemented to improve the efficiency and effectiveness on production system in small medium automotive company. The FiF production system is an enhancement of the current continuous improvement concept in which presently most of the automotive industries implement Lean Manufacturing (LM) as their model of continuous improvement. Even though the LM has been adopted and adapted, and widely recognized and utilized by the worldwide organizations, but many unsolved issues such as product defects, products recall, late delivery and product recall still appear especially involving the suppliers or vendors. This study has been conducted by reviewing the current trend of the continuous improvement program, discussing on the unsolved issues and in-depth analysis for the automotive manufacturing sectors has been conducted by identifying the success factors of continuous improvement program. This developed new production system, known as FiF, has been introduced in an automotive tiers system through reshuffling the vendor tiers system by introducing Tier-0. The intents of the developed FiF production system are to improve the communication between the vendors and shorten the lead time through wastes elimination by introducing single production layout with multiple vendors. The results of this study as implemented in a small medium automotive company shows significant impacts in minimization of wastes. The introduct_d FiF production system has optimized the unsolved issue where the production lead time and communication between the vendors have been improved because the selected vendors are involved directly with production assembly in manufacturer plant It is foreseen that the future potential of FiF concept will drastically change the production system where the manufacturer's production plant will be segregated section by section and each section will be owned by vendors.