Implementing Positive Lean Manufacturing in Automotive Industry: A Case Study

Abstract

In the current competitive economic environment, the survival of industries in the global market can only be possible if production is done with high quality and minimum cost. The human factor is the main component of lean manufacturing, the knowledge of workers and management staff affects the success rate of implementation of lean. Low quality and high price products are the main obstacles of the organization. This study helps to understand the importance of human elements in which the implementation of lean manufacturing in the organization involves lower-level workers which have been more helpful to make the organization productive. Observed the previous layouts and find the flaws and gaps in the manufacturing process, layouts and pre-decision process that how much human factor involved in the current situation. Layout improvements, WIP concept, JIT, Time and Motion study were implemented with help of human factor involvement on every stage of the pre-decision process through the motivation of workers, defining the responsibilities and duties of the workers and standardized the work through process flow, detail and assembly drawings, quality checks and production record and analysis had done on available data with the use of the QuasiExperiment method. The data had been gathered before and after implementing these techniques with the help of workers and management staff. The MATLAB software was used to create the Plotting cool graph for better data manipulated and explained the difference. After implementation of these techniques 30% and 40.7 % manpower were reduced in the Water Bowzer and Fire Fighting vehicle project respectively. Implementation of JIT and WIP Concept with the involvement of human factor the rollout time is reduced to 34% in Water Bowzer and 85% in Fire Fighting vehicle project.