Implementing Lean Manufacturing at Brandix Hangers (Pvt.) Ltd. (Course module: MN5502)
Chamudi Withanawasam Student ID: 1032755
Table of Content Abstract ........................................................................................................... 3 1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 3 2. Problem........................................................................................................ 6 3. Implementation ............................................................................................10 Multi skilled workers ......................................................................................10 Problem solving by all ....................................................................................11 Process improvements ...................................................................................11 Cellular Manufacturing ...................................................................................11 5S ...............................................................................................................12 Just-In-Time manufacturing (JIT) ....................................................................13 Andon Boards ...............................................................................................13 Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) ................................................................14 4. Conclusion ...................................................................................................16 5. Recommendations ........................................................................................17 6. Reference ....................................................................................................18
List of Figures Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6:
Brandix Supply Chain ........................................................................... 4 Brandix Hangers Plant Layout - Before ................................................... 5 Value Stream Map - Before ................................................................... 8 House of Lean ....................................................................................10 Brandix Hangers Plant Layout – After ....................................................14 Value Stream Map - After.....................................................................15
Abstract This report explains the implementation of Lean Manufacturing concepts in a manufacturing facility. Lean Manufacturing, which was first implemented in Toyota Production System in Japan to compete with the western automobile manufacturers who used mass production to manufacture the automobiles, uses the concept of increasing the value to the customer by eliminating the non-value adding activities or waste [1] from the process. These concepts were later adopted by the other manufacturers and proved to be successful in responding to the changing customer requirements. Implementation of Lean in Brandix Hangers was successful and proved to be more efficient and effective than the traditional mass production which was not suitable for a factory with greater product variety. The main objective of this report is to explain how Brandix Hangers Pvt. Ltd. has employed Lean Manufacturing processes to improve the company performance. The report consists of 5 parts where the first section introduces the group and the company, its position in the supply chain. A brief introduction to the operating procedure before Lean manufacturing was introduced is also given in this section. Next section discusses the problems faced by Brandix Hangers that led them to take initiatives to implement Lean practices and the third section discusses the implementation procedure. Last 2 sections conclude the report and discuss the possible further improvements to the process.
1. Introduction Briefly outlines the background of your company, the market it operates in, its place in the supply chain, who the customers/suppliers are, etc. Outlines the typical manufacturing processes which take place in your company and their place in the company as a whole.
Brandix Group is the largest exporter of apparel in Sri Lanka and is engaged in developing, manufacturing and marketing end-to-end apparel solutions to global fashion super brands such as Victoria's Secret, Gap, Next and Marks & Spencer. With an average annual turnover of 600Mn USD, Brandix provides employment to over 42,000 direct employees within their 28 own manufacturing facilities and 14 partner manufacturing facilities located in strategically significant locations in Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh[2]. Brandix either own or has close financial partnerships with their suppliers, reinforcing their core strengths of advanced research and development and fast stock turnaround times. This integration also provides smooth uninterrupted operation capabilities throughout the group. The Supply chain of Brandix group is shown in Figure 1.
Fabric Weaving/ Knitting
Branded apparel companies
Yarn Fabric Dying and Finishing
Garment Manufacturing
Overseas buying offices
Fabric Hangers, Buttons & Threads
Trading companies
Figure 1: Brandix Supply Chain [3] Brandix Hangers is operating as a partnership between of Brandix Group and the Mainetti Hangers Group which is an established global brand for garment hangers. It is the sole manufacturer and supplier of Mainetti, A&E and Randy branded hangers for the USA market from Sri Lanka. Brandix Hangers manufacturing facility located in Sri Lanka houses 14 injection moulding machines with a production capacity of 200 million hangers a year. It is located closer to the main transportation links and to its customer factories to reduce the transportation costs. The main material, plastic polymer is imported to the factory as powder or pebbles from suppliers at Korea, Singapore and India. There are number of different types of hangers materials such as clear plastic, coloured plastic, clear with metal wire which use different types of plastic. Hangers are manufactured using plastic injection moulding process which makes 6-12 hangers at a time depending on the size of the hanger and the machine capacity. They are then held for few seconds for cooling down and then ejected using the ejection pins built in to the moulds. The output from the machine contains the hangers and runner either attached to each other or automatically separated by the mould. After that hangers are moved to the assembly centre where the hangers are separated from runners and metal hooks are fixed before packing in boxes to be stored in the warehouse until delivery. For the hangers which require size guides to be fixed, they are fixed at the assembly centre and bundles of 10 hangers with the same size guide are tied together and packed in boxes. They are then moved to the quality inspection centre where samples are taken out for quality inspection. Company employees 14 computer controlled injection moulding machines in the shop floor. They are general purpose machines where the moulds are designed with the base plates to match machine specifications. Machine setup between batches requires a skilled technician to setup the mould on the machine and to fix the electrical and cooling channels. A changeover normally takes about a half a day for the machine setup and further half a day to adjust the moulds such that the final product is free of any defects. Brandix Hangers plant layout is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Brandix Hangers Plant Layout - Before The metal hooks and the size guides are manufactured by local small scale manufacturers and are delivered in batches, which are then kept in the inventory until required. The completed hangers are sold mainly to garment manufacturers within the group. Hangers are produced based on the forecasts for the period and kept in the warehouses until the orders are received.
2. Problem Identify a specific area, issue or problem which exists – either already known or which you discover as a result of your study. Discusses the issues, problems, decisions, etc. involved in ensuring the successful functioning of this area of manufacture.
Number of different reasons such as increase pressure from partner companies to lower prices, groups’ decision towards greener production forced the company towards an initiative to implement Lean Manufacturing within the factory. After an analysis by the process engineering team, the management decided to introduce Lean Manufacturing concepts to the factory floor as well as to the other areas of the plant. Lean production is a multi-dimensional approach that covers a broad range of management practices, including Just-In-Time (JIT), Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Total Quality Management (TQM), team working, cellular manufacturing and supplier management in an integrated system. The main concerns of Lean are growth by generating value for the customers, society and the economy with the objective of reducing costs, improving delivery times and improving quality by total elimination of waste[4][5].
According to Ohno [6] there are seven types of waste within a production facility such as: 1.
Defects: Quality defects add costs to the company by means of rework and scrap in addition to the capacity loss and excess inventory. At Brandix hangers, number of hangers is produced before the defectless hangers are released. This is mainly due to the errors in setting up the moulds in the machine. In addition, since no quality check is carried out until the end of production, the hangers with no obvious defects (hangers that are seemingly defect less to the operator) are passed through the process and discarded at the end. Moreover, the defective hangers are not re-workable and therefore have to be crushed into plastic powder, a proportion of which is then mixed with the raw material to form the mixture that is fed into the machine.
2.
Overproduction: Products that are excess to the requirement are stored in the warehouses until the demand arises. Overproduction discourages the smooth flow of goods throughout the factory and shifts the company’s focus on customers. Once the hangers are made and stored in the warehouse, marketing teams’ main focus is on getting rid of the stocks rather than satisfying the customer demand. This also led the companies being unresponsive to the market need which is a great disadvantage with the current market competition.
3.
Transportation: Product movements within the factory do not add any value to the final product but adds costs. But it is essential for the parts to be moved to the machines but minimising the movements could improve the efficiency of the factory. Due to the current arrangement of the factory where the injection moulding machines are fixed in one end of the floor where the assembly and the warehouses are located at the other end causes the raw material to be moved from one end of the factory to the other and then the products are moved back once completed. In addition, since the mixed powder is moved manually by factory workers in open wheelbarrows, the wastage is quite high. In addition, material loading into the machine result in material being spilling on the floor and the majority of them are swept away by cleaners.
4.
Waiting: Products waiting to be processed or assembled add to the product lead time with no addition of value to the final product. This is mainly caused by machine breakdowns, poor material flow or distance travelled by the parts being too high. Waiting also represent the factory workers being idling due to the lack of work. Especially in the Brandix factory, the machine operators are idling while the injection moulds are setup and machine maintenance are carried out. These workers not only are a cost to the company but also could disrupt the work of the others.
5.
Inventory: Inventories not only add costs in terms of stock keeping and handling, it also takes up space and money which can otherwise be used for the value adding activities within the organisation. For organisations like Brandix who operates in a fast changing market, inventories reduce the flexibility of the manufacturing system and prevent it from responding to the changes in the market. Brandix Hangers keeps raw material inventory worth up to three months and a month worth of finished goods inventory. These inventories hide the operational inefficiencies since material orders are placed including an allowance for this.
6.
Movement of staff: Staff making excessive movements makes them unsatisfied about the job. For example, Brandix Hangers using manual labour to transport and load the machines not only cause material wastage but more importantly require workers to carry them to the machine and lift the material up to the loader which require considerable manual power. This is a waste of human energy which could otherwise be used to a more effective work which would add value to the product.
7.
Excessive processing: Processing the products unnecessarily cause waste of material and energy which is an additional cost to the company. Injection moulds at Brandix are of three types, namely: cold runner 2 plate moulds, cold runner 3 plate moulds and hot runner moulds. Hangers manufactured by cold runner 2 plate moulds need further processing to remove the paths where the plastic runs to the mould whereas in the 3 plate mould they are separated automatically reducing processing. Hot runner moulds do not produce any wastage as the temperature in the path where the plastic runs in to the mould is maintained at the melting temperature of plastic so that no plastic is wasted and hangers do not require further processing.
An investigation was carried out to identify the areas where improvements could be carried out and a value stream map was created. Value stream mapping is a visual tool to analyse the activities for their value adding capabilities which provides a starting point for process improvement. Value stream mapping presents the information necessary to understand the actual flow of materials, resources and information through all processes from start to finish for the product considered. This knowledge provides information on interruptions to the flow and where the improvements can be made to enhance the flow across value stream. The value stream map created to identify the processes that add value to the final product is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Value Stream Map - Before
This analysis revealed number of key areas which does not add value to the final product but incur significant costs such as: 1. Inventory turnover is too slow to maintain a flexible production process Since the raw material is ordered from overseas suppliers, they are ordered in bulk and kept in the warehouse. This reduces the transport and administration costs involved with ordering. However, this prevents the company from being able to change the manufacturing schedules to cater sudden changes in the demand. Also orders are placed more than required by the forecasts to provide safety stock over any delays in shipping and also to compensate the wastages during the process. 2. Material mixing and transportation causes a significant wastage The plastic powders are mixed to provide the required composition in the factory. This is done manually by factory workers in the bins and then transported in wheelbarrows to the machines which are then poured into the machines. This process of mixing material results in significant wastage of powder material and inconsistence in quality of the hangers. 3. Factory layout causes significant increase in the lead time and defects Process layout in the plant creates considerable increase in the lead time in terms of transportation and Work In Progress. The quality control being carried out on the final product results in defective products being manufactured and progressing through the process. This practice causes value being added to the defective products which are discarded at the end of the process. All those above factors represent the ‘Muda’ (waste) which has to be eliminated to enhance the performance. The next section explains the procedure undertaken to eliminate the wasteful processes and to make the manufacturing process lean.
3. Implementation Suggests possible improvements: your proposed changes must be well evidence and argued – for example outlines the existing process/system and the proposed new/updated process/system and comparing the two in some appropriate manner.
Foundation
Jidoka (Autonomation)
Just In Time (JIT)
Quality Control
Quantity Control
Implementing Lean requires a thorough understanding of the process of the plant and creating a solid background for change. House of Lean as shown in Figure 4 is designed as a tool to guide the organisations to implement Lean. As a visual tool, this can be used as a guide to provide an insight of Lean to the employees of the organisation. House of Lean comprises of three parts namely, a) the foundation: which provides the stable base for the implementation, b) two pillars JIT and Jidoka: are the strategies to become Lean which provides the structure of Lean implementation and c) the roof: which represent the objectives to provide a better, faster and cheaper outcome to the customers. The roof is also labelled as Kaizen or continuous improvement where the processes are improved continuously to provide even better service to the customers.
Figure 4: House of Lean Implementation of Lean practices in Brandix Hangers was completed in different phases as discussed below: Multi skilled workers Creation of cross functional workforce is key to implementation of Lean concepts as they are capable of handling any issue quickly and effectively. Formation of multi skilled workforce enables the managers to replace them in cases of absenteeism or resignation to ensure an uninterrupted operation. In Brandix Hangers, number of workshops was held to provide the workers with the necessary skills from operating the machines to finishing and quality checking the hangers. This lead to a change in
the working culture where the workers in the cell creating a community of workers working together to achieve a common goal of producing a product rather than set of individual workers each performing the task they are assigned.
Problem solving by all Once the workforce is given the understanding of the complete process, they are much more resourceful to the company than as just a set of workers who perform a given set of tasks. They are the people who find out the problems in the production flow and they are the ones who have the best understanding of how the work is done. Before Lean was implemented, the workers used to make changes to the work processes to make it easier for them however did not inform the management as they disapprove the process being deviated from the standard. The rules in the organisation were strict and the workers were expected to follow the rules. However, Lean practices encourage the management to listen to the workers when taking decisions. A suggestion board was placed on the factory floor where the workers could attach the suggestions into 4 different categories: process, quality, maintenance, other. Sticky notes were used to stick the suggestions and the respective engineer was responsible of taking actions on the suggestion. In addition, the workers themselves were allowed to implement the required changes to the system under the supervision of their immediate supervisors. The solutions from the workers proved to be effective where number of changes suggested by them were implemented to improve the process efficiency.
Process improvements Process improvements play an important role in improving efficiency of a production facility. Even though the lead times can be reduced by eliminating non value added activities, for a more efficient system it is necessary to reduce the cycle times and machine changeover times. Reducing the cycle time can be achieved either by making changes to the product design or by changing the process in which the products are manufactured. The improvements to the process were introduced by reducing the number of cold runner moulds and using hot runner moulds. Although this increased the investment required for manufacturing the mould, for long term orders, it is economical as they reduce the wastage thereby reducing the unit cost. In addition, the moulds were designed such that the runner heaters are interchangeable so that no additional equipments are necessary. It is calculated that the ‘runner-less’ moulds can reduce the cycle time by around 25% In addition, an automated powder feeding system was introduced to mix and transport plastic powder to the machines. It was calculated that such a system would reduce the wastage by over 90%. This not only reduces wastage but also reduce the amount of manual work done by the factory workers which does not add much value to the end user.
Cellular Manufacturing Cellular manufacturing offers number of advantages in implementing Lean. Arranging the workplace in a cellular layout reduces the distance travelled by the products. In addition, this layout provides a basis for cross functional teams by allowing them to interact with each other while empowering workers with greater problem solving powers. Therefore, Brandix the shop floor was adjusted to create cellular layout such that two machines face each other and the total workforce was divided into 7 teams where each team included two injection moulding machines, two machine operators,
staff from quality and assembly sections such that the hangers are completed within the cell and can be transported directly to the warehouse. New cellular system not only freed up space but also proved that only half of the human resource is sufficient to operate the process. Therefore, 4 new sophisticated moulding machines were installed in the facility. The workers were trained to carryout cross functional operations so that they can help and cover up each other. Part of the quality control staff was retained in the quality control department to assess the quality of the raw material as the metal hooks required a special salt spray testing to be carried out.
5S Concept of 5S reduces waste and optimises the productivity by maintaining an orderly workplace. 5Ss is translated to English as Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain. • Sort Sort focuses on eliminating unnecessary items from the workplace that are not needed for current production operations. Brandix Hangers used to keep both electronic and hard copies of records for 5 years. These records were piled up in a corner of the warehouse where most of them were damaged by the humidity. As the initiative to 5S all the hard copies were discarded while the soft copies were created and stored in the organisation network such that it can be retrieved when necessary. The policy was changed to keep only 1 year’s worth of record in the system and to update the records after each financial year. The factory workers were also encouraged to get rid of unused machine parts and defective hangers that were left on the factory floor. • Set in Order All the items (tools and machinery) that are being used for day to day activities were given a specific place to ensure “everything has a place” thus the workers need not search for items when necessary, reducing the waste of time and unnecessary moving. The location of each item was marked and labelled clearly so that every one knows where to find what. The workers were encouraged to return the items back once they were used. • Shine A daily cleaning schedule was prepared and one member from each team was given the responsibility to ensure that their work area is clean and tidy. Having a clean work area has many advantages. In addition to having a pleasant working environment, it makes it easy to spot fluid leaks, vibration and misalignment, and breakages which can result in equipment failure, safety hazards and loss of production, if left unaddressed. • Standardise Signs and posters were placed on the shop floor to encourage the workers to use 5S so that it becomes a part of the daily routine. The members were given 5 minutes at the beginning of each shift to sort and order the work cell and the surrounding area and to complete daily machine maintenance checklist. • Sustain One of the hardest steps in 5S is changing old work habits. Easily people could slip back into their old habits. To ensure the long term commitment, lunch time workshops were carried out for over a year to encourage workers to use 5S principles and to emphasis the benefits of using these concepts. In addition, a reward programme was introduced to recognise the best team to maintain 5S concepts within their cell.
Just-In-Time manufacturing (JIT) One of the main concerns of Lean Manufacturing is to remove the inventories kept within the organisation. This process ensures uninterrupted operation among all the partners of the supply chain and requires good coordination between them. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software was introduced to enable free flow of information between the organisations as well as within the departments of the organisation allowing them to plan their processes accordingly. This removes the need to keep safety stock therefore the inventory can be eliminated from the process. Brandix Hangers have the advantage of being part of the supply chain managed by the same top management, which ensured that a single system could govern the whole information handling process. The ERP software is used to place orders for the hangers and the order details were available immediately for the production planners, thus the production was planned efficiently. If the mould is already fitted to a moulding machine, the information is passed to the machine operation team immediately via internal communication systems and the customer is informed of the possible delivery times. If not, the order is placed in the queue to be picked up by the next available machine while the mould is being prepared for production by the mould maintenance department. This unrestricted information flow provided smother operation between the partners and also improved the trust between them. Material suppliers for Brandix Hangers consisted of two types. 1) Large scale overseas suppliers who supplied the material in bulk and 2) Small scale suppliers who are often family members or relatives of the current factory workers who supplied the parts in small batches. Large scale suppliers were used to supply the raw material such as plastic and colouring powders while the small scale suppliers supplied the metal hooks and size guides which were manufactured using manual tools often inside houses. Lean Manufacturing concepts were introduced to these small scale manufacturers at the same time as the main factory. They were invited to take part in the workshops conducted by the organisation regarding the Lean implementation. In addition, Brandix also provided them with the resources necessary to reduced non value adding activities in their processes and allowed them to keep the profits to encourage them to further make improvements. Company used to perform a salt spray test to check the quality of the metal hooks bought in by an external supplier. Towards the end of the implementation, this test equipment was leased to the supplier together with the staff so that they can perform the test in their material rather than finished products which provided a considerable reduction in cost per hook which was distributed among the two companies. All the small scale manufacturers were encouraged to build closer relationships with their suppliers to create full supply chain integration. However, creating an alliance with the overseas suppliers were challenging as they were not willing to make changes to their systems to incorporate Lean concept. However, discussions with them allowed Brandix Hangers to make orders in smaller batched more frequently reducing the inventories kept within Brandix.
Andon Boards Improved flow of information was made available to the factory workers via signs fixed in the shop floor indicating the daily target and current production of each type of hanger and the current status of each machine. The machine status information was also available through a traffic light signalling system where green indicate the normal operation and orange indicate a small scale problem which can be fixed by the team themselves and red light, which is set to be activated by the operator, indicates a significant fault where the Maintenance Engineer and the nearest experienced technician respond immediately. Although initially the machine breakdowns were common in the plant causing disruptions to the operation, with the introduction of TPM, machine breakdowns reduced significantly.
In addition, as an initiative to improve health and safety of the factory, a signboard was used to indicate the daily accidents and the fatality of them. A reward scheme was introduced where the workers were rewarded for each day spent without any accident to further encourage the health and safety in the factory.
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) Initially, injection machine uptime was only 50% which is a significant concern as half of the working hours of the employees are wasted due to machine breakdowns. In addition, a machine breakdown means not only a waste in the idling labour but most importantly a waste of melted plastic loaded to the machine which requires considerable electrical power to melt. Normally the machines are loaded with a full load of plastic unless the production is much less than the full load worth of material. Therefore at a breakdown, if the machine was to be switched off, which is the case in most of the time, the material is solidified and in some cases can’t be reused. Therefore, an analysis in to the reasons for these breakdowns revealed that the faults are visible for a considerable period of time but was either ignored or temporary solutions were put in place without really looking in to the cause of the problem. In addition, majority of breakdowns are caused by poor maintenance of the machines such as lack of lubrication in the moving parts or damaged electrical wiring. Therefore, the concept of Total Productive Maintenance [7] was introduced so that the machines are maintained rather than repaired. Surveys suggest that up to 70% of availability and performance issues are caused by deterioration of machines which occurs as a result of basic maintenance routines not being followed [8]. Autonomous maintenance, a key aspect of TPM, trains and focuses workers to take care of the equipment and machines with which they work[9]. Accordingly, employees were trained to carry out machine maintenance and to ensure that the machines are maintained well to minimise unexpected breakdowns. A daily, weekly and monthly maintenance schedules were introduced and one member from each team was given the responsibility to make sure that the tasks are carried out in time. Any concerns over faults were repaired by the operator himself and reported to the maintenance engineer for a further analysis. The engineer was expected to carry out “5 why” analysis to identify the root of the fault and to take action to prevent the fault from reoccurring.
Cell 1
As it can be seen by the resultant plant layout in Figure 5 the space required was reduced significantly and the material movement is minimised.
Figure 5: Brandix Hangers Plant Layout – After Value stream map in Figure 6 provides further evidence of improvements as the total lead time have gone down from 3 months to 1 month where as the value added time is only 1 minute. The planning horizon is reduced from weeks or months to days which allow more flexible production scheduling.
Figure 6: Value Stream Map - After
4. Conclusion Draws conclusions on the overall process and any lessons learned (both for the company and for you as an individual),
Once the systems are in place, the most important task was to create a culture to constantly improve the process. Continuous improvement is an important part of Lean implementation where change is made part of the organizations culture. Lunch hour workshops organised to keep the motivation up and to provide information on how to succeed in the current environment provided a great support in succeeding in the implementation. The speakers included not only the professionals in the area of Lean Manufacturing but also the workers from other organisations where Lean methods were implemented successfully. Such speakers provided the motivation for the workers to take action to make Lean a success in the organisation. Implementation of 5S was challenging as the workers are used to a daily routine. Introduction of daily cleaning schedules and asking them to do the cleaning instead of a cleaner was challenging as initially the workers saw this as an increase in workload. But later on when most of their routine tasks were automated this was accepted as part of their daily routine. After these changes were implemented, a survey was carried out to assess the success of the project. The factory workers were all positive about the results generated by the implementation of Lean in the factory and the customer organisations responded by increasing the number of orders placed with the factory. Number of high value contracts was signed within a year of implementation and the price per product was reduced by one third and the lead times were further reduced by implementing the suggestions from the workers. Although the company now have excess staff, they were not fired as it would damage the support obtained by the remaining workers. Instead, some were transferred to nearby factories to fill up their staff requirements and the others were given skills training in different areas and recruited in the different parts of the factory. Although this concept reduced the visibility of financial improvements caused by changes, this ensured support from the workforce which would otherwise resist due to the fear of losing their jobs. In conclusion, the Lean practices improved the productivity of the plant by a considerable percentage while reducing the environment impact and staff dissatisfaction. Since whole project was carried out by the existing engineers by using the ideas from the staff, it was a success while some of the other similar projects carried out by other plants owned by the group failed and resulted being even more unproductive.
5. Recommendations Gives recommendations on how this process/system could be improved for future business.
Implementing Lean Manufacturing principles in a factory environment is never an easy straightforward task. It requires a thorough understanding of the current process and the ways in which it can be improved. The principles of Lean that makes one process successful might not apply to the other due to the variation in organisational structure and the culture [5]. Therefore it is essential to identify the key concepts of Lean that are suitable to the specific organisation under consideration. Moreover, company should emphasis that some theoretical concepts of lean manufacturing such as zero inventory[6], zero non value added time, or perfect product and production levelling are impossible to achieve although other theories such as zero defects are obtainable as the workers could easily get discouraged by wasting their effort on impossible. Therefore, it is important to maintain a balance between improvements to reach perfection and gains obtained by the investments made. Although implementation of Lean Manufacturing allowed Brandix Hangers with increasing profits, to sustain these advantages, further improvements are necessary. Mainly although the machine cycle times were reduced by the process improvements, still the mould changes take up a considerable amount of the lead time. In addition, each mould change creates a considerable amount of defective products as the amount of plastic injected to each cavity and the pressure are set manually using a calculated value as a guide. This process needs to be automated such that the machine detects the amount of plastic injected in to the mould so that the mould is filled with the material evenly. The company should consider automation of most of the routine tasks so that the defects are minimised. However, in a country like Sri Lanka where the labour costs are much lower, it might be economical to use the manual labour for activities than automating them. Therefore, a thorough analysis should be carried out to identify the tasks that needed to be automated for the process to be cost effective. Moreover, introduction of automation needed to be carried out carefully as this could be seen by the workers as a threat of them being replaced by the machines which would damage the reputation of the company. In addition, Brandix should work closely with their suppliers to achieve total supply chain integration. Rather than selecting the suppliers based on the lowest price quoted in a bidding process, selecting an individual reliable supplier for each product and working closely with them to improve the processes would provide a much leaner supply chain in the long run. Further improvements to the process can be made by introducing concepts such as Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) which reduces the lead time further. However, since the company currently uses general purpose injection moulding machines, such a change would require changes to the machines which require a considerable investment and technical knowledge which are unavailable to the organisations at the moment.
6. Reference [1]
Competitive advantage through efficiency: An Aldi case study Available at: http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/aldi/competitive-advantage-throughefficiency/reducing-costs-and-eliminating-waste.html#ixzz2g035vsnY
[2]
Available at: www.brandix.com
[3]
L. Nawarathna, “Supply Chain Management Major Assignment”, pp 7, available at: www. Slideshare.net
[4]
Lonnie Wilson, “How to implement Professional, pp 59-72, Sept 2009
[5]
Rachna Shah, Peter T Ward, “Lean Manufacturing: context, practice bundles, and performance”, Journal of Operations Management, Volume 21, Issue 2, pp 129149, March 2003
[6]
Daniel Roos , James P. Womack, , Daniel T. Jones, “The Machine That Changed the World”, Simon & schuster, 2007
[7]
Steven Borris, “Total productive maintenance”, McGraw-Hill, pp 15-42, 2006
[8]
M. Jones, “TPM”, Works Management Magazine, Vol. 54, no. 8, pp 41, 2001
[9]
K. Rizzo, “Total Productive Maintenance”, American Printer, vol. 125, no. 9, pp. 16-18 & 20-21, 2008
Lean
Manufacturing”,
McGraw-Hill