INTRODUCTION
Improving customer service, making operation faster, more operation and reduction in costs are challenges faced by manufacturers today. To meet these challenges many companies in India searching to improve their ability to compete globaly. Wastage during production process is rapidly growing day by day in industries. This is because of change in taste of the customer. Which will lead to increase in production costs. There are different techniques of waste reduction and performance enhancement like Just In Time (JIT), Total Quality Management (TQM), Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Kaizen etc.
Kaizen is a Japanese hybrid work. It is a compound word involving two concepts: Kai (change) and Zen (for the better). The term comes from Gemba Kaizen meaning ‘Continuous Improvement’ (CI). Continuous Improvement is one of the core strategies for excellence in production, and is considered vital in today’s competitive environment. It calls for endless effort for improvement involving everyone in the organization. Kaizen requires no or little investment. The principle behind is that, a very large of small improvements are more effective in an organizational environment than a few improvement of large value. This philosophy implies that strong small, incremental changes are routinely applied and sustain over a long period which results in significant improvement.
The Toyota Production System is known for kaizen, where all line personnel are expected to stop their moving production line in case of any abnormality and, along with their supervisor, suggest an improvement to resolve the abnormality which may initiate a kaizen. The cycle of kaizen activity can be defined as:
• Standardize an operation and activities.
• Measure the standardized operation (find cycle time and
amount of in-process inventory)
• Gauge measurements against requirements
• Innovate to meet requirements and increase productivity
• Standardize the new, improved operations
• Continue cycle
Principal of kaizen :
Kaizen works on following three principals:
Consider the process and the result , so that , action to achieve effort are equivalent.
Systemic thinking of the whole process and not just the one parameter of process. This will avoid creating problems elsewhere in the process. Evaluate the job to the best possible way to get the job done.
A learning ,non-judgmental, non-blaming(because blaming is wasteful)
And intentional approach will allow the re-examination of the assumption that, the best process is put into place.
Benefits of Kaizen :
Increased productivity.
Improved quality.
Reduced cost.
Faster deliveries.
Improved safety.
CASE STUDY
The company HV Axles Ltd. (Early it used to be the Axle Division of Telco (Tata Engineering, Jamshedpur)) is selected for case study, located in Jamshedpur, Bihar in India. This company came into existence in March 2000. The major product of the company is Front Axle and Rear Axle. Currently supply to Tata Motors’ Jamshedpur and Lucknow plants for commercial vehicles with GVW of 12Ton and above, and for the Army Vehicles is 7 Ton. This company is mainly focused on manufacturing as per customer’s design. HV Axle Ltd. currently has a capacity of about 3, 24,000 axles per annum ( inclusive of all varieties), total annual sales volume is US$50 Million-US$100Million and total employees are 1154, out of which 846 persons work in Axle division where the case study was taken up. In this division 510 employees are permanent as operator’s level and 336 in supervisory. This work is on HVAL, Rear Axle (Assembly Line 1) in which target production is 300 Axles per shift but the current production is 210 Axles per shift (8 Hours). This is due to lack of multiskilled development, lack of training to operators, no proper utilization of resources, and Non involvement of staff in Kaizen Program etc. Our main motto was to achieve the target production and find the factors which are responsible for lack of the production in the company. For completing a Rear Axle assemblies there are 35 work-stations corresponding 56 operators.’ Problems faced in company:
• Number of operators like to be exceeds in assembly line.
• Production efficiency
• Product cost
• Turn over of company
• Quality maintaining problem
• System for simplification
Implementation Process:
These problems were discussed to managerial personals, engineers and operators levels, by considering different factors and found to be improved by using Kaizen. One of the major objectives in implementing Kaizen System is to achieve a common goal of the whole company. The main thing to implement kaizen is improve the level of training, continuous improvement programs and give incentive schemes (providing additional value canteen coupons, Dairy, pens or cash according to saving in product manufacturing) for encouraging the employees. Thus planned programs were run by the Human Resource department to improve skill for the upper level employees. Also training by Internal/external faculties was carried out to create awareness, improving communication and operating skills of the employees. There were involvement of employees through group activities like Quality circles, suggestion Schemes and Kaizen.
JIT was already successfully implemented in that existing company. Electronic Data Interchange Technique was used to Link between Company and its suppliers through monitoring system. This system had achieved quick response in production line and close relationship between company and its supplier. The Production planning and material preparation was stable with respect to end consumption. This leads to maintain inventory at a reasonably low cost. For quality, quality indicators had been employed to examine the achievement of suppliers in quality, on time delivery etc. For encouraging the suppliers, JIT programs were organized and suppliers are invited for participated in JIT program. Mostly supplier companies were near to the case company. Thus supplier can reduce the time spent in distribution and coordinate tightly with company. Kanban was used for transforming the information throughout the production process hence more visibility in production process. By using Kanban, waste of Production resources or lose of orders can be eliminated and resulting in achievement of balanced production. Kaizen shows a lead role for improving the productivity and quality of the products. To meet the target/Productivity from 210 axles per shift (8 hours) to 300 axles per shift the cycle time should be equal to the Takt Time and hence meeting customer requirement. The company receives the raw material in the form of cast iron beam, then various operation are carried out on this beam like clamping, putting dowel pins, shellac and gasket, fixing and tightening of stud, picking and tightening of anchor plate, placing Z bracket, putting bush and grease filling, placing oil seal, placing hub and brake drum etc to obtain the final product. Table 1 shows detail of station wise operator’s function and time taken for completion of job at their station. Let T1 and T2 are time taken by the operator in completion of job in two iterations. Mean time is calculated for getting the average time for completing a job at different work stations.
Before kaizen Station Wise Details and Time Taken to Complete the Job
Requirement: 300 axles per shift (8 hours)
Available time: 480 minutes (8 hours)
Lunch break: 30 minutes
Tea break: 15 minutes
Net available time: (480-30-15) =435 minutes/shift
Takt Time= Net available time/customer requirement = (435/300) = 1.45 minutes= 87 seconds
Thus Takt Time for each operator is 87 seconds at every station.
(Fig. 1 & fig. 2, Total Operators Load Chart before KAIZEN) From the above fig. 1 & fig. 2, it is clear that Takt Time is 87 second and no- one operator is close to that Takt Time. Thus there is need for improvement there. As some operators have very less time for their operation like operator no.5, 26, 38, 39, 40,48etc. Thus there is need for recalculation of number of workers for Assembly Line 1. Theoretically Calculation for Number of Operators Sum of mean time =3182 seconds Takt Time = 87 seconds Number of operators required = (Cycle Time) / Takt Time = 3182/87 = 36.57 Hence 37 operators are required to meet the current customer demand.
Thus from this total numbers of operator required for that assembly line is 37 but actual number of operators working are 56. Hence 19 operators are in excess as per calculation. As this calculation is done by theoretically and taking all parameters as standardized. i.e. workers are not able to move from his workstation in any difficulty and they have to stay on his line in any condition ( to satisfy their personal needs). Here machine fault time, material delay due to any difficulty etc are not considered. But there is certain need for improving the operator’s time to meet the Takt Time in order to meet the customer demand at minimum cost and adequate quality. For this clubbing of operators is required so that they will meet the same target and achieve the quality. Table-2 shows station wise details and time taken for completion of job after Kaizen where clubbing of manpower and workstation is done to meet the Takt Time.
After Kaizen
Station Wise Details and Time Taken to Complete the Job
Hence, number of operator after KAIZEN = 50
To prevent the production of unnecessary (including parts, products and documentations), many ideal facilities are created. Every check points in company are created with these facilities so that operator would not carry unnecessary task and prevent him from industrial accidents
This would reduce in work in process, reduced in production lead time, improved equipment utilization and its efficiency. The current layout of the company is U shape. This will lead to increase workers interaction and reduce in material handling cost.
Result After implementation Kaizen:
From fig. 3 & fig. 4, it is clear that using kaizen techniques number of operators remain 50. i.e. 50 numbers of operators are required for performing the same operation, meeting the customer demand. This was only possible by multi skilled and well trained operators for performing the different task at different work stations and major success was reduced Work In Progress (WIP) at the work stations. In this study operator number 25 has assigned some relevant task along with his work as the mean time for performing his job was very less. Thus at the same time he will perform these task on the same station. Similarly operator number 27, 29, 35 have to assigned some relevant task at their stations in order to meet Takt time. Thus after kaizen they will meet the required production and target with the adequate quality. Hence the production is improved from 210 Axle per shift to 300 Axle per shift by less number (50) of operators. One more interested thing is observed from the study that not a single operator after Kaizen reach to 90% of the Takt time. These will results in minimum cost and increase in productivity. This kind of cooperation will strengthen the organization and sprit of the HV Axle Ltd. So that it can be more competitive in the long run.
Conclusion of case study:
In this paper, a case study is presented with the objective of discussing the implementation Kaizen in the industry. Continuous improvement is a key goal for healthy company. Kaizen is a philosophy that needs the involvement of all people in the company. Emphasis should be placed on reduction in throughput time, addition of workstation to meet the Takt time, and elimination of unnecessary operations, activities and workstation. This study proves that with the Kaizen and other techniques, the company can survive with lower manufacturing cost and higher quality. Multimedia can be used in educating the workers about JIT concept and their implementation issues.
Comments
Post a Comment