Professional Documents
Culture Documents
FACULTAD DE INGENIERÍA
INGENIERÍA INDUSTRIAL
CURSO:
TRABAJO:
PROFESOR:
SALAS SCHWARZ, JORGE ALFREDO
SECCIÓN:
IVA2
1. Caso de estudio 3
2.1. (Introductory) Describe the ways that Ikea reduces costs. How do they drive
continuous improvement and innovation? 7
2.2. (Introductory) In what ways does Ikea consider the entire supply chain when
designing products? Why do "a few centimeters" matter in terms of total cost
for Ikea? 8
2.4. (Advanced) Describe some of Ikea's innovations. How could your company
utilize some of the same ideas to reduce your supply chain costs? 9
2.5. (Advanced) How does your company implement "Design for Manufacturing?"
Describe a defect or struggle that your company has with a particular product.
How could this product be redesigned to make manufacturing easier? How
could this reduce the overall cost of the product? 10
3. Bibliografía 11
1. Caso de estudio
IKEA is increasingly designing its furniture with packaging and manufacturing in mind from the
start. An IKEA store in Moscow.
PHOTO:YURI KOCHETKOV/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
By SAABIRA CHAUDHURI
June 17, 2015 5:30 a.m. ET
ÄLMHULT, Sweden—A few centimeters can make a truckload of difference for IKEA.
“We are engineering costs out of our value chain that don’t contribute anything,” Chief
Executive Peter Agnefjäll said in an interview in this Swedish town of 16,000, home
to IKEA’s first store.
The Swedish retailer’s push comes as it works to hit an ambitious target: to raise
sales to €50 billion ($56.18 billion) by 2020. That translates into a 74% jump from
fiscal 2014, which ended Aug. 31, or average growth of nearly 10% a year. IKEA’s
sales rose by just 3% in fiscal 2014 from a year earlier, or 5.9% once adjusted for
foreign-exchange impacts.
The company in 2011 cut the price of its Bjursta dining table to €199 from €279 after
choosing to make the legs hollow, reducing weight and raw-material costs. In 2012,
IKEA lowered the price of its Textur lamp by 34% after slimming down the number of
components to nine from 33. That cut packaging weight by 28% and allowed IKEA to
fit 128 lamps on a pallet that previously took just 80.
Despite the lower price tags, IKEA runs the risk of alienating customers by increasing
assembly time. The company has gained something of a reputation for being
associated with fights between harried couples who attempt to go shopping in one of
its labyrinthine stores or assemble its more complicated products.
“We have had products we have actually destroyed by doing too much knock down,”
said packaging manager Allan Dickner, referring to IKEA’s process of making
something flatter for packaging. “It’s always a balance.”
Ikea’s Global Sales Rose by just 3% in the fiscal year ended Aug. 31 from a year earlier.
PHOTO: TOMOHIRO OHSUMI/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Instead of changing products once they have hit shelves, IKEA is increasingly
designing things with packaging and manufacturing in mind from the start.
“The good designers, the experienced ones, they have this in their backbone,” said
Mr. Dickner. He said IKEA’s designers use software that calculates optimal sizes and
shapes, helping the company avoid having to tweak designs or scrap ideas entirely
because they’re deemed too expensive to ship.
The company recently sent its designers to visit factories before coming up with ideas
for a new collection focused on comfort. “Understanding production and the available
techniques first allows us to develop new solutions that we can really manufacture,”
said product developer James Futcher. To encourage more regular customer visits,
IKEA is increasing its limited collections to at least 10 this fiscal year from two last
year.
The company’s distaste for the excessive stems from its roots. Älmhult, where
founder Ingvar Kamprad in 1958 opened the first IKEA store, lies in an infertile part of
the country with scant natural resources. Residents say they grew up sharing with
one another and making the most of the little they had.
Mr. Kamprad’s frugality is the stuff of legend, prompting years of media stories about
how he only flies economy class, replaces minibar drinks in his hotel rooms with ones
from supermarkets, and was once denied entry to a business awards ceremony for
arriving on a bus. Now 89 years old, Mr. Kamprad can be seen in Älmhult from time
to time, and occasionally advises the management board.
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“He’s a very down-to-earth man,” said IKEA’s head of food, Michael La Cour.
Over fiscal 2015, IKEA plans to open 13 new stores, adding to the 315 it had
previously. It is also working on buying land in India for its stores in the country but
declined to say when its first location would open. IKEA over the next few years will
ramp up its focus on online shopping, currently available in just 13 of its 27 markets.
The company in fiscal 2014 saw 1.5 billion visits to its websites, up 200 million from
the prior year, and more than double the visits seen by its physical stores.
The company is ramping up its locations for click-and-collect, where people order
online and then pick up merchandise in a store. It has also begun experimenting with
more central stores, last year opening a city-center store in Hamburg, Germany, that
has a smaller range than IKEA’s out-of-town stores and from which customers can
use company bikes designed to hold cargo to take their purchases home free of
charge.
Out-of-town stores nevertheless are likely to remain IKEA’s dominant strategy. Mr.
Agnefjäll said the company is focused on opening more of these near public-transport
hubs. In December, IKEA opened a store in Seoul that is a 10-minute walk from a
subway station.
2.2. (Introductory) In what ways does Ikea consider the entire supply chain when
designing products? Why do "a few centimeters" matter in terms of total cost
for Ikea?
Dentro de las tiendas de Ikea se pueden ver los muebles en cajas, los cuales
son diseñados con la finalidad que el cliente sea el encargado de
ensamblarlos y este espacio ocupado por la cajas sirve como un gran
almacén. De esta manera, la empresa emplea la estrategia de integrar al
cliente como parte de la cadena de suministro al hacerlo partícipe de las
operaciones en ensamblaje para el producto final. Asimismo, cuando los
diseñadores de la empresa elaboran los bocetos de los nuevos productos, se
detallan los costos de fabricación asociados a estos y son estudiados para la
evaluación de proveedores de materiales de todo el mundo. Es así como
IKEA está diseñando más productos tomando en consideración el embalaje y
la fabricación como puntos principales.
Debido a ello, han logrado reducir sus costos de transporte ya que dentro de
un camión entran más unidades de cajas. En otras palabras, estos
“centímetros” que utilizan para maximizar la cantidad de productos enviados
hace posible una reducción de costos al cumplir la demanda.
2.4. (Advanced) Describe some of Ikea's innovations. How could your company
utilize some of the same ideas to reduce your supply chain costs?
2.5. (Advanced) How does your company implement "Design for Manufacturing?"
Describe a defect or struggle that your company has with a particular product.
How could this product be redesigned to make manufacturing easier? How
could this reduce the overall cost of the product?
As a small group, visit a local competitor of Ikea. As you browse the store, look at the
product design. List all the product design innovations that you notice that are
created to reduce costs either in manufacturing or transportation.
3. Bibliografía