Enhancing Local Material Demand Planning

Abstract

The research had four main objectives: 1) to study demand driven material requirements planning, 2) to study the implementation of demand driven material requirements planning, 3) to study intra company communication and 4) present the recommendations to the case company. The research started by creating a plan for the thesis and conducting all the needed paperwork. The plan was approved by Satakunta University of Applied Sciences as well as the case company representative. In the plan was already created the conceptual framework as well as set the limitations to the research. The limitations included two main ideas: 1) the research only focuses on the maintenance parts and 2) is does not focus on the company level material demand planning, meaning that the results in this thesis are in straight accordance to the local production only. The theory is based on literature review and the empirical part of the thesis is based on observations and interviews executed during the year of 2021. The results were presented in the empirical data analysis, where the yearly maintenance plan was edited to more usable and communicative mode by changing and adding information to the MS project tool document established yearly by the production planner in close cooperation with the case company’s customers. Secondly, was discussed the implementation of the communication strategy and the proposed strategies to develop it. In the recommendations was presented that the communication is divided in three parts: 1) face to face communication in weekly meetings, 2) technical communication via shared database and 3) visual communication within all of the staff members in the case unit. To conclude, the proposed changes could enhance the operations of all three main operators: customer, logistics and production departments.