Improving the productivity of an assembly production line utilising lean tools and simulation: a case study
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Abstract
This study considers the production line of a leading multinational company that is facing significant wastes in the form of waiting and delays. A lean project case study is applied to the production line. The methodology used is to first explore the current situation to find wastes and bottlenecks. Then possible improvements are proposed which are examined using computer simulation for validation purposes and for searching for other emerging issues that may arise from the proposed improvements. Finally, the proposed improvements are applied to the real-life production line. The improvements lead to productivity improvement and significant cost reduction. This study explores the one-piece flow tool which, despite its importance, shows few case studies in the literature as it is difficult to implement in real life. The proposed methodology in the case study can be extended to other companies, and also can be used in lean project utilising other lean tools.
Recommended Citation
Ezzeldin, A. I., Mohamed, T. A., and Abdallah, K.S. Improving the productivity of an assembly production line utilizing lean tools and simulation: a case study, Int. J. of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage, 2021
Comments
In this paper, the lean principles are applied to a leading multinational manufacturer of electrical components in Egypt that manufactures electric transformers. The current production state is analysed, and wastes are identified. The most important waste in this case is the long production lead time resulting from the frequent waiting wastes and the time consumed in the consolidation and deconsolidation activities related to the batching process. The situation is improved via implementation of one-piece flow. However, even after the one-piece flow implementation, the simulation shows that the utilisation is not evenly distributed among the processes, leading to long waiting wastes for different resources. This is improved by balancing the production line and improving the cycle time. The management of the company adopted the recommendation of the paper leading to a reduction in the secondary winding cycle time, in the primary winding, and in the pallet assembly processes. The production lead time is decreased from 543.98 to 259.62 hours, the company’s productivity is increased by 52.27%, and the labour cost is reduced by 25.76%. The company has since enjoyed high customers’ satisfaction rates, production flexibility and monetary net profit. One-piece flow is not always easy to implement and sometimes some machines absolutely need a batch to be able to work. In that case, one piece flow needs to focus on minimising the batch size. It should be noted that there is always a trade-off between choosing a fast but prone to disruption one-piece flow, or robust but prone to wastes batch production. Each company should select wisely based on their operational and supply chain strategies. In either case, Lean tools can be utilised to improve the performance and to reduce wastes. As an extension to this research, it is recommended to implement total productive maintenance (TPM) to reduce system downtimes and variability of equipment performance. TPM will help the system to function at a high level of performance to suit the customer targeted service level. The researchers also recommend improving inventory management to avoid understocking or overstocking as well as wastes caused by excess or scarcity inventories.