A Systematic Approach to Evaluate the Process Improvement in Lean Manufacturing Organizations

Abstract

Numerous tools and techniques have been developed to eliminate or reduce waste and carry out Lean concepts in the manufacturing environment. However, in practice, manufacturers encounter difficulties to clearly identify the weaknesses of the existing processes in order to address them by implementing appropriate Lean tools. Moreover, selection and implementation of appropriate Lean strategies to address the problems identified is a challenging task. Therefore, the authors developed a methodology to quantitatively measure the performances of a manufacturing system in detecting the causes of inefficiencies and to select appropriate Lean strategies accordingly. Value Stream Mapping (VSM), manufacturing performance metrics and maturity stage of an organization are used to specify the manufacturing problems. Finally, a case example has been presented to demonstrate how the procedure developed works in practical situation.