Track: Senior Design Project Competition

Abstract

The logistics component of every effective supply chain must be the focus to guarantee the timely, safe, and uninterrupted delivery of finished goods to clients. For the finished goods to leave the company's facilities as soon as manufacturing is complete and arrive at a specified destination as quickly as feasible, the outbound logistics system must operate effectively. Adequate outbound logistics guarantees that demand is satisfied at the destination on time and in full, leading to increased sales and ultimately fostering consumer loyalty and satisfaction. Unfortunately, a noticeable amount of time loss has been observed in the food factory outbound logistics, mainly the waiting time for the truck-loading process. This project aims to analyze and minimize the outbound logistics time. It is a valuable opportunity to improve the truck loading process to reduce the negative effect of losing the company's sales and goodwill with customers. This project follows the A3 methodology to analyze the current situation and reduce the related time waste by using Lean tools to identify waste components and find potential areas for development. After data analysis, five suggested solutions were revealed to improve processes and decrease related waste. The paging system solution was chosen because it satisfied the food factory waiting time goal, requirements, specifications, and constraints. This project has shown a noticeable improvement by reducing the waiting time before truck loading in the business-to-business warehouse by 48.18% and retail warehouse by 8.11%. Finally, emotional intelligence recommendations were suggested to improve employee's well-being and reduce their occupational stress.  . 

Index Terms: Outbound Logistics, Order Loading, Lean Manufacturing, Emotional Intelligence (EI), Simulation Model.