Supply chain management in Renault factory

Extraits

[...] Stock In the Renault plant we visited, there were different stocks of pieces about everywhere, especially in the metal sheet and stamping facility. Before implementing the red light-green light system, it was a huge mess: all the workers did not necessarily know when or where the assembly line was stopped, and used to stock their different pieces of material mostly where they could, which made it very complicated when the assembly line started again. Let's take back the example of our door: let's say that the production line has a problem where they fix the handle of the door to the door, and has to stop. [...]

[...] Thanks to Bruno Estienne, Antoine's family friend, we had the opportunity to visit and discover the Renault factory of Douai. According to several example we saw in class based on the car industry, we decided to grab this opportunity because we were sure it would fit with the content of the course and that we couldn't easily find a better way to understand properly how a big supply chain works and how JIT is managed. We drove from Lille to Cuincy, and met Bruno Estienne on Monday 22nd of November for a 2 hour tour of the factory followed by a 2 hour interview. [...]

[...] Logistic area 7 D. assembling area 7 III. Analysis using taught concepts and technics 8 A. The lean production 8 B. Interchangeability of parts 9 C. Total Quality Management (TQM) 9 IV. Recommendations 10 A. Stock 10 B. [...]

[...] Clio roof, then a Scenic hood for example). Once plates of metal sheets are scheduled, they are transferred to the metal sheet area in order to be linked. The employees `work' in this area is mainly to control the quality of the metal sheets after being pressed (1/20 is controlled), and also to transfer pieces from a place to another and then technicians clock in for the maintenance (average breakdown of a robot: every 72 hours) Metal sheet area The next step of the visit was the metal sheets area. [...]

[...] Once, the Renault site had a problem on its elevator for 72hours, which caused huge unacceptable delays. In order to satisfy customer demand, once, cars had to be transported from the site to the retail store by helicopter (about 2000Euro per car just for the trip), so we can easily imagine how expensive some breakdowns can be. Rearranging the whole production and assembly line in order to make it on one level and especially in a straight line (not in a U-shape which can be disturbing sometimes when you have to deliver parts in the right place) will cost a huge amount of money on short term, but is probably good advice on the long term, as a lot of problems would be avoided or solved faster, and the transportation system would be reorganized in a better and faster way as well. [...]