- By Lanner
- In Customer Stories
- Posted 17/10/2013
TRW Automotive Reduces Operating Costs by Almost £100,000 Per Annum using WITNESS
APPLICATION:
Supply Chain Operations
VERTICAL:
Automotive
SECTOR:
Manufacturing
BENEFIT:
TRW Automotive uses WITNESS
Predictive Simulation to model its
supply chain operations, reducing
costs by nearly £100,000 per
annum
TRW Automotive is one of the world’s leading
suppliers of car accessories. Founded in 1999
and located in Jablonec nad Nisou in the Czech
Republic, Lucas Varity s.r.o is a division of
TRW Automotive focused on the development,
manufacture and sale of hydraulic brakes.
Faced with a challenge to reduce its operating costs by
10%, the company worked with consultancy DYNAMIC
FUTURE to deploy Lanner’s predictive simulation platform,
WITNESS.
The WITNESS model was designed to dynamically simulate
material flows, storage capacity, handling equipment and
personnel, to remove bottlenecks and optimise warehouse
and supply chain operations at the brakes company.
It mapped different types of handling equipment such
as fork lifts, all transfer points, truck capacity and
constraints, with a view to eliminating a number of
delivery points across the supply chain, as well as
reducing the number of fork lifts used in production. The
model also simulated handlers’ work on production lines to
identify inefficiencies.
As a result of the conclusions highlighted using WITNESS,
TRW Automotive was able to reduce the number of delivery
points across its supply chain and cut the number of
forklifts it uses in the warehouse, leading to savings of
245,000 CZK (£8000) per month.
Josef Jindra, former logistics manager of TRW Automotive,
comments, “Working with DYNAMIC FUTURE s.r.o. brought
us a new approach to process optimisation. Our use of
dynamic simulation to model handling processes helped
us to verify a lot of different scenarios with an emphasis
on elimination of delivery stations, decreasing the number
of fork lift trucks and reducing total operational costs.
After implementing the conclusions of the model we were
able to reduce operational costs by almost £100,000
per annum. This project showed us big possibilities in
optimising processes through dynamic simulation and
started a long term relationship with DYNAMIC FUTURE
s.r.o.”