Abstract:
Often SMEs do not have enough monetary funds for pursuing investments on advanced manufacturing and management technologies and struggle to remain competitive with bigger firms. In this project, the SME Remor Srl is studied and analysed to understand if reducing wastes and unnecessary activities in operations can lead to improvements in customer satisfaction as well as reductions in the organisational cost structure. This would allow a better competitiveness in the market without investing in assets but only re-organizing what the company already has. The DMAIC technique is used to assess customer needs, to understand which are their dissatisfiers and how basic quality is ensured by production process. The in-depth analysis focuses on the sub-process of manufacturing with bigger room for improvements without increasing indirect fixed costs. An observational study has been accomplished for collecting data to assess the current state of the sub-process.
This thesis wants to demonstrate that the re-design of business processes for waste reduction could generate a win-win situation. Eliminating waitings and non-value added activities, the lead time is shortened and final product price lowered: customer satisfaction is strengthened and the company productivity is also increased. Having a more competitive final product price, also customer portfolio could be enlarged as new potential customer segments could be acquired.
