Efficiency Enhancement in a Medium Scale Gearbox Manufacturing Company through Different Lean Tools - A Case Study

Abstract

Productivity is an important parameter for all small and medium scale manufacturing industries. Lean manufacturing emerged as production strategy capable of increasing productivity by identifying and eliminating non value added activities. This article deals with productivity improvement in a pre-assembly line of gearbox manufacturing company with a case study using lean concepts like process flow chart, process Gantt chart and time study. This paper illustrates using a case study on how a value stream mapping has to be carried out in a planet carrier pre-assembly line. Value stream mapping and work standardization are the key tools used in lean manufacturing and lean transformation. It makes the process smoother, helps in reduction of lead time and ultimately increasing the productivity. From the observed results it was found that, the productivity has been increased from 7 pieces to 10 pieces in the first step assembly when the proposed VSM was implemented. The second step processing time was reduced by the execution of proposed value stream mapping with TAKT time of 126 minutes and 165 minutes of processing time for demand of 10 pieces were achieved and the overall processing time has been reduced by about 24%.