Effective Material Handling System for JIT Automotive Production Line

Since the past two decades, small, medium and large automotive industries have grown rapidly and globally in Malaysia in line with the increasing of demand from customers. To increase market share and sustain in industry, most of the companies continuously applied world-class manufacturing techniques such as Lean Manufacturing, Toyota Production System, Just-in-Time (JIT), Kanban, Kaizen, Six Sigma and others. In order to achieve world class manufacturing status such as on-time delivery, high quality and high production efficiency, an effective material handling system is necessary to support production processes. Based on observation at a JIT automotive assembly line of a local automotive manufacturer in Shah Alam, it was found that the existing material storage system used was bulk storage called as wire mesh and trolley. Also, the material handling activities were run without referring to any standard or procedure. Therefore, the aims of this case study are to design a new storage system for an automotive component which is Air Cleaner by using computer aided design software, CATIA V5R20 and to evaluate its’ effectiveness by using a computer aided manufacturing software, DELMIA Quest. Improvement will be made on the existing material handling system by introducing new standard poly-boxes and a gravity flow rack system for material handling activities. The results obtained from the computer simulation were compared to the existing performance of the line. Inventory level has managed to be reduced by 74% while space utilization reduced by 18.18%.