Colloquia

Summary

In this study, several opportunities through which the lead time within Wouter Witzel’s vulcanisation department can be reduced were developed. After a thorough analysis of the current vulcanisation department, improvements were thought of and their effects were estimated using a discrete event simulation in Siemens plant simulation. Based on this, an implementation plan was developed in which the financial benefits were assessed too.

In the end, two improvement opportunities were further worked out. One concept was able to actually reduce the lead time of the vulcanisation department, the other concept did not. However, both concepts caused a significant positive financial effect with an ROI over 5 years of somewhere between 167% and 667% depending on the yet to be revised hourly rate of the oven.

Along with the research regarding lead time reduction in Wouter Witzel’s vulcanisation department, an exploratory review was performed in which the potential of AI in a lead time reduction process was assessed. The review showed that AI is capable of contributing to the analysis of the existing situation quite well. But the use of AI in developing and simulating new ideas is still hard, which is logical when taking into account that AI is a data-driven technology and data on new concepts is often not available.