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The Impact of Productivity Improvement Approach Using Lean Tools in an Automotive Industry

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Abstract

In today’s competitive environment, as manufacturing industries face additional pressure to meet the dynamic nature of customer demand, lean manufacturing is an essential tool to reduce this burden to a great extent. Various lean methodologies exist like value stream mapping, 5S, Kaizen, line balancing, just-in-time, poka-yoke, Kanban, total preventive maintenance, and single-minute exchange of die, which are currently being implemented in industries for the improvement of productivity and reduction of overall cycle time. The study discusses the importance of combining value stream mapping and line balancing techniques using existing literature and is validated by a case study on an automotive component manufacturing industry’s assembly line. In the past, lean tools have been criticized for being static tools due to a lack of measurable output due to the implementation of the techniques. In this study, the real-world performance of value stream mapping allows for clear understanding and accurate prediction in terms of cost and time savings achieved using lean tools. Value stream mapping is a highly beneficial lean tool for industries with constrained resources to assess the considerable gain lean tools would provide and how the long-term investment would be beneficial to offset non-value adding activities. The empirical validation shows a reduction of the overall time cycle by 20.28% and a gain in the number of units produced by 46.16%. The results also demonstrate that an increase in productivity by eliminating waste (through value stream mapping) and modifications in the layout and assigning an appropriate number of workers (through line balancing) is possible after careful assessment.

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Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to sincerely thank Prof. Leela Rani at Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, for providing the assistance and resources for the preparation of the manuscript. The authors would like to thank all the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that greatly improved the quality of the paper. Lastly, the authors would like to thank their parents and all the members associated with the research work directly or indirectly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, Rajasthan, India

    Krishna Veer Tiwari & Satyendra Kumar Sharma

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  1. Krishna Veer Tiwari
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  2. Satyendra Kumar Sharma
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Contributions

Krishna Veer Tiwari, conceptualization, writing — original draft, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, and visualization.

Satyendra Kumar Sharma, methodology, writing — review and editing, and provide insights.

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Correspondence to Krishna Veer Tiwari.

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Tiwari, K.V., Sharma, S.K. The Impact of Productivity Improvement Approach Using Lean Tools in an Automotive Industry. Process Integr Optim Sustain 6, 1117–1131 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41660-022-00252-4

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