The customer had six weeks to finalize a proposal for insourcing the assembly of a European OEM’s instrument panel assembly operations. The size of the facility in which the assembly would be done was a key factor of the total cost. They needed detailed facility plans to determine if a suitable building was available or if they would have to construct one.

An IET engineer joined the customer’s team to spearhead the facility design portion of the assignment. Based on the proposed assembly sequence, IET determined line-side and off-line storage requirements for more than 100 components that would be used in the sequential build process. Kitting, pre-assembly and sequential delivery of key components, such as wire harnesses, were fundamental practices that had to be evaluated for their effect on assembly line design, storage space requirements and material flow.

IET provided proposed layouts for the customer’s current facility and another available site with the major costs and benefits of each one clearly identified.

The customer ultimately received the business and began producing instrument panels using one of the designs developed by IET without interrupting the OEM’s operations.