Sustainable production – combining Lean, agile and green philosophies
In a recent PhD thesis at Chalmers University of Technology and FlexLink, the integration framework of Lean, agile and green concepts for material handling system design is developed. The thesis was presented at a PhD defense seminar on September 28:th.
Material flow is a significant factor in the design of manufacturing plants. Failure to fully integrate proper production logistics solutions including handling devices results in huge waste of production time, space, resources and energy.
In a manufacturing plant, these important factors can be related to the concepts of:
- Lean (resources and space)
- Green (energy and life cycle)
- Agile (time)
In his PhD thesis, Maziar Mashaei develops a sustainable design framework combining methods and models to realize automated material handling systems that fulfill the criteria of the mentioned philosophies.
"This results presented in this thesis are clearly addressing the issues in today's production environment. We aim to apply the framework and models in the design of systems and controls from FlexLink. I know this will give unique opportunities to our customers as the optimizing of their production logistics solutions will be based on their real need and with a minimum of resources, already at the design stage." concludes Fredrik Boberg, R&D manager at FlexLink.
Klas Ålander
Corporate Communications
FlexLink AB
Tel: +46 31 337 2499
klas.alander@flexlink.com
FlexLink is a leading production logistics supplier – providing material and information flow management solutions to assembly and manufacturing industries. Headquartered in Göteborg, Sweden, FlexLink operates sales units in 23 countries and is represented in more than 60. In 2011, FlexLink had 716 employees and the group turnover was 1,614 million SEK (179 M€).
FlexLink is part of the Coesia Group consisting of 13 companies specialized in the production of automated machinery, related products and services. In 2011, the Coesia Group had a turnover of 1,149 million Euro and 4700 employees.
