Dushyanth Kumar KR, Shivashankar GS and Rajeshwar SK
Over the decade, there has been increasing interest in the leaner and more responsive operations along with reduction in Cycle time to improve performance across the entire business network. “Process Improvement” means making things better. However, when we engage in true process improvement, we seek to learn what causes things to happen in a process and to use better technology to reduce product variation, remove activities that contribute no value to the product or service produced, and improve customer satisfaction. To examine all of the factors affecting the process in related with men, machine and materials are main responsible for the transformation of materials in to a product or service. Lean manufacturing is originated and developed in Japan which is considered as a business strategy to reduce and eliminate wastes occurred during manufacturing process, thus it leads to improve the productivity by giving quality products with higher accuracy especially for small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) To implementing lean approach, VSM (value stream mapping) and kaizen principles are most effective in nature among all other lean practices. In this research work, a case study on implementing VSM and kaizen as the lean manufacturing initiative is clearly reported. And the same lean tools are implemented in pump assembly of medium scale enterprises to identify and reduce the wastes during this case study. Here initially process path is visualized by drawn current value stream mapping (CVSM), after tracking the entire process wastes affecting the cycle time are identified and analyzed. In the next stage, the application of Kaizen principle to reduce the wastes in the process, then future state map is developed to analyze the previous cause for the waste development. This capability will definitely enable the considering enterprise to achieve cycle time reduction, competitive strength and productivity.
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