| Summary: | Companies have to assure their share on the global market, meet customer demands and produce customer-tailored products. With time and production line updates, the layout becomes non-optimal and product diversity only increases this problem. To stay competitive, they need to increase their productivity and eliminate waste. Due to a variety of products consisting of similar components and variants thereof, a huge number of various elements are encountered in a production process, the material flow of which is hardly manageable. Although the elements differ from each other, their representative elements can be defined. This paper will illustrate a methodology for searching representative elements (MIRE), which is a combination of the known Pareto’s analysis (also known as ABC analysis or 20/80 rule) and a calculation of a loading function, that can be based on any element feature. Results of using the MIRE methodology in a case from an industrial environment have shown that the analysis can be carried out within a very short time and this provides for permanent analysis, optimisation and, consequently, permanent improvement in the material flow through a production process. The methodology is most suitable for smaller companies as it enables rapid analysis, especially in cases when there is no pre-recorded material flow.
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