Productivity Improvement of Crankcase Machining Line Using ‘Lean’ Tools

Abstract

The takt time becomes a challenge for today’s manufacturing firms, mostly OEM’s, which follows just-in-time manufacturing to get benefit from keeping fewer inventories of their expensive products. Increase in customer demand decreases takt time and calls for more production rate. Inability to cope with increased demand rate, leads to loss in sales order. The lean tools help for assessment and improvement in existing resources by giving a proper direction for improvements. The work in this paper involves a case study of improving productivity (typically, production rate) of a machining line to match customer demand rate. The takt time reflected the customer demand rate of ‘8’ components/day while the inconsistent production rate of ‘6.6’ comp./day is observed. The complexity in work culture was produced due to virtual cells for work distribution and close variations of auto times. The work place was studied for less and unstable production rate by following important but often neglected lean tool ‘Genchi Genbutsu’ with a systematic approach which led to develop ‘Root Cause Diagram’. The scientific analysis by lean tools and bottleneck removal of HMC machine increased the production rate to ‘8.2’ components/day; as per the requirement. The dissertation work is constructed such that it forms a generalized and systematic methodology for addressing similar manufacturing lines and acts as a prominent guide for mitigating similar problems. The Kaizen areas are discovered in this work; and its analysis is done for justification which ultimately leads to more ‘lean’, ‘efficient’ and ‘safe’ manufacturing line.