Improve Sofa Assembly through Automation and Redesign of the Processes

Abstract

English: To redesign the current assembly process of the Ektorp Sofa from IKEA in order to improve cycle times, quality levels and to reduce, if possible, costs associated with manufacturing, production times and materials. IKEA wants to increase either the productivity or the quality standard of the Ektorp Sofa by simplifying the processes involved in the construction of the sofa and modernizing the production line. Method: By identifying problems and challenges for automation associated to the current design of the sofa. Proposing new design for the base frame and designing a respective assembly line for each solution. Subsequently a simulation for each assembly line is done using Tecnomatix. Finally all the results obtained from each solution are analyzed, compared and discussed. Conclusions: After a deep analysis of the sofa, it has been stated that the current design has too many pieces that require a high number of operations to assemble it. Moreover, it uses a huge amount of glue and staples. Different solutions have been presented to improve the design. Additionally, two new base frame designs have been presented simplifying the structure, reducing the number of pieces, the necessary assembly operations and avoiding the use of glue or staples. The current assembly process has also been redesigned in an automated assembly line layout and it has been proved through simulation that the new line is faster than the current one. Moving the process to a line arrangement has also increased the quality of the final product as the operations in every stage are simplified and automated.