Downtime causes in a production cell for laminated veneer products

Productivity is often used to determine how well resources are used for an operation. Most often, the ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it determines productivity. Laminated veneer products are considered complicated products often with complex shapes, a raw material with high variation, and machining processes that create scrap materials that need to be handled. Therefore, keeping a high productivity in the industries producing such products may become challenging. This study reports productivity measurements in a production cell consisting of an adhesive, pressing and processing station. The study seeks to increase understanding of production-related problems in this industry. The research has been using productivity measurement as well as interactive discussions between researchers and workers. Measurement of downtime causes were made for 20 days, for a total of approximately 300 hours. The production cell had 1,299 minutes of stops. Of those, 450 minutes were one-time events. The rest were intermittent disturbances. Many of them could be explained by the dust-laden air and processing residues but were also related to veneer and adhesive. There is a need for determining material and processing parameters; however, the first priority is cleaning the factory. From a social perspective, some other issues must be added to the discussion of this paper. First and foremost, the business has gone through a transformation from a family business to a privately held firm. From the non-family employee’s view, this is a huge change. This has resulted in unclear roles and responsibilities within the company, which has also affected the productivity of the company. ; Flexible automation in manufacturing of laminated veneer products