Designing In-House Logistics Operations towards Industry 4.0. Volkswagen Autoeuropa Case-Study

Sebastião Cascata Gago da Graça

Key information

Authors:

Sebastião Cascata Gago da Graça (Sebastião Cascata Gago da Graça)

Supervisors:

Susana Isabel Carvalho Relvas (Susana Isabel Carvalho Relvas)

Published in

July 23, 2020

Abstract

The automotive industry might be seen as a living organism which is constantly affected by internal and external factors. In a highly competitive business environment, the quest for not missing the 4.0 industry boat is enormous. Therefore, the Portuguese automotive plant, Autoeuropa, from Volkswagen Group, intends to re-design their in-house logistics procedures towards industry 4.0 in order to guarantee high levels of operational efficiency. The thesis hypothesis gives a contribution to operationalize the implementation of automated guided vehicles and also automated support during the picking procedure in Volkswagen Autoeuropa. In order to figure out the optimal almost full-automated scenario, a static analysis is developed. Afterwards, a more thorough analysis is carried out. For developing the aforementioned analysis, a discrete-event simulation model will be created and used as a digital twin to test those brand-new configurations of the in-house logistics operations, throughout Visual Components 4.1 software. The major findings are: the obtained results emphasized clear frailties of the simulation software Visual Components 4.1; the new process identifies a potential saving of approximately fifty-eight thousand euros in terms of line feeding (human capital reduction) per year for a specific sequence family of components; awards a contribution to the development of new versions and features in the simulation software industry. It also opens the door and takes the first steps of a long way which culminates into the creation of a digital twin for the entire factory.