Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

Southland Trailer is a truck trailer manufacturer based in Lethbridge, AB. The company fabricates their entirex000D
products in-house. The current facility layout of the fabrication plant is non-optimal. It has been graduallyx000D
expended over the past 20+ years, which, unfortunately, results in some legacy issues. The non-optimal facilityx000D
layout is one of the most notorious. The current facility layout incurs non-value-adding material movements,x000D
which leads to low efficiency and productivity. An estimate of extra 4030 labor hours are spent annually onx000D
moving materials and work in process (WIP) trailers through the facility due to the inefficiency of the currentx000D
facility layout. It costs the company more than $250,000 yearly, the money of which could have been betterx000D
spent in value-adding business activities. In order to address this issue, Southland Trailer plans to build a newx000D
plant with the optimal plant layout within 2-3 years. The company intends to gain expertise in designingx000D
optimal facility layout through this research project. Moreover, Southland Trailer also wants to explore otherx000D
possible directions for collaborations, including looking for a new material to be used for the walls of theirx000D
enclosed cargo trailers, analyzing production flow and looking for possible improvement, and designing a newx000D
suspension system.