LANNER
CASE STUDY: NISSAN SHIFT EXPECTATIONS WITH
LANNER SIMULATION SOFTWARE
Sunderland plant increases production of new automotive
models by 20 per cent using Lanner software
Background
Nissan Motor Manufacturing (UK) Ltd, (NMUK) is an
automotive manufacturing plant in Sunderland, Tyne
and Wear. It is the largest car plant in the United
Kingdom, and has regularly been recognised as the
most productive in Europe.
In December 2006, NMUK began producing Nissans
latest model, the Qashqai. Built on an all-new platform,
the Qashqai will cater for those car buyers who want
a more dynamic design but are not attracted to the
large, aggressive nature of a sport utility vehicle. The
car slots below the X-Trail in the Nissan range and
partially replaces the conventional Primera and Almera.
Challenge
In a hugely competitive market, NMUK has to
demonstrate excellent value for money when securing
contracts for production of new models. New contracts
to manufacture models can only be secured by
providing the best manufacturing option in terms of
quality, cost and delivery. NMUK faces competition
from other Nissan plants globally and also from low
cost countries in Eastern Europe where several major
automotive manufacturers have recently established
plants to provide low-cost propositions for the
European market.
NMUK needed to optimise production processes for
the manufacture of Nissans latest Qashqai model. In
particular it needed to understand and map the role of
its new suspension plant that was installed specifically
for the manufacture of the Qashqai.
Simulation as a Solution
In maximising the plants ability to produce the
required volumes of the Qashqai, several options
existed: traditional methods and simulation-led
methods. Traditional Industrial Engineering methods
include the creation of Man/Machine charts in order to
understand the individual welding cells and standard
calculations to determine the capacity using a planned
system efficiency percentage. However this manual
approach is immensely time consuming in manpower
hours and therefore costly. When this approach was
NISSAN CASE STUDY
evaluated against a simulation-led approach, traditional
methods simply could not compete with the depth of
analysis that simulation technology is able to provide.
Building on a successful track record of using WITNESS
simulation over many years Nissans first choice was
to use the Lanner software for this analysis. NMUK
have developed their own methodology for modelling
large scale production lines. Firstly, small models are
produced to look at particular cells in the line and
improve the cycle times of particular processes, then
the processes are all put together in a large scale model
fed by the data from the smaller models. This model
helps establish the overall plants ability to achieve
volume requirements. This methodology was used and
the variety of levels of WITNESS model were produced
and analysed.
The simulation models took just a few weeks to
develop to a stage where NMUK was receiving
tangible results and identifying efficiency gains. The
simulation technology is so effective because it is
visual, interactive, it takes into account variability and
users can see and understand why certain results
are achieved with different control strategies and
investment options.
The models built are used on an ongoing basis
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LANNER
and are continuously updated to keep pace with
developments at the plant. Hundreds of experiments
are possible using frameworks such as the WITNESS
Scenario Manager which automatically runs different
experiments and explores the range of possibility. In
this way great new options are evaluated and improved
upon.
Benefits
The launch of the Qashqai vehicle has been extremely
successful and has exceeded all sales expectations.
This has resulted in the suspension plant moving on
to a four shift pattern running 24 hours a day, seven
days a week.
Lanners WITNESS solution allows NMUK to test ideas
to improve the plant without having to stop the plant
running, which simply isnt an option due to the volume
requirements. From this point of view the cost savings
generated as a result of the solutions are huge.
As an established user of Lanners WITNESS, the
degree of support NMUK now requires from Lanner
is the help desk function. Lanner ensures that there
is always someone at the end of the phone who can
answer queries directly or review a model that is
emailed to them.
NMUK has an ethos of developing models that are
NISSAN CASE STUDY
user-friendly as well as being mathematically accurate.
It is vitally important that the model looks like the area/
system that is being simulated in order for the user to
fully buy-in to the simulation. This has been further
enhanced on this project by the animation of turn-tables
and seven axis robots that had previously not been
done before. The seven axis robots have been added to
the standard NMUK start up model as they will be useful
in future projects.
In addition, NMUK has recently adapted the model to
be used in conjunction with Witness Optimizer. Part
of the Suspension plant has the capacity to be set up
in a billion different ways, which means that there are
a billion different scenarios to maximise efficiency at
varying degrees. However, this number of scenarios
is obviously beyond the realms of comprehension for
the human brain and yet Witness Optimizer is able to
perform an intelligent search through the options in
order to obtain a great solution for NMUK within an
hour.
The next step for NMUK involves the need to boost the
capacity of the Suspension plant in order to be able to
meet the ever increasing customer demand for Qashqai.
In September, NMUK employed an additional 180
members of staff to help push production of the Qashqai
by a further 20 per cent. The Witness simulation will
be a key tool in developing and validating proposals for
increasing the capacity of the plant.
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