Improving Manufacturing Operations Using Lean Principles and Prioritizing Projects: Success Factors, Pitfalls and Challenges
Author URLs
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
2019
Subject: LCSH
Lean manufacturing, Continuous improvement process
Disciplines
Industrial Engineering | Mechanical Engineering
Abstract
Improving operations has been essential for manufacturing companies in gaining competitive advantage especially when the industry was heavily geared towards adopting lean principles. In the age of smart factories, implementing improvement projects to achieve a better performance is no longer a matter of choice but a necessity for company competitiveness. While success in any single project is of utmost importance, selecting the right project to start the improvement initiatives is as equally important. Therefore, prioritizing projects is a critical and necessary step for any manager to ensure better outcomes. This paper presents a case study involving a large manufacturing company’s 3-months intensive efforts targeting product and process improvement. Several projects focusing on various areas in the manufacturing process have been defined, and lean and statistical process control (SPC) tools were chosen to support improvement activities. Selecting the order of implementation and the changes that had to be made along the way provided invaluable input in framing success factors, pitfalls and challenges in prioritizing improvement projects in traditional manufacturing plants. These elements and the impacts of the decisions made are depicted through detailed descriptions of two projects. The first project was about production layout, and the second project targeted tooling process. In both improvement efforts, lean methods were used primarily.
Repository Citation
Thacker, Harnish H.; Erdil, Nadiye O.; and Chen, Shuang, "Improving Manufacturing Operations Using Lean Principles and Prioritizing Projects: Success Factors, Pitfalls and Challenges" (2019). Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications. 43.
https://digitalcommons.newhaven.edu/mechanicalengineering-facpubs/43
Publisher Citation
Thacker, H. H., Erdil, N. O., & Chen, S. (2019). Improving Manufacturing Operations Using Lean Principles And Prioritizing Projects: Success Factors, Pitfalls And Challenges. Huntsville: American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM).
Comments
Copyright, American Society for Engineering Management, 2019
Paper appeared in the Proceedings of the International Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Management; Huntsville, (2019).
Full-text of this paper is available to the University of New Haven community.