implementing operations excellence in small & medium sized manufacturing companies – using...

IRJMST Volume 3 Issue 3 Online ISSN 2250 - 1959

International Research Journal of Management Science & Technology http:www.irjmst.com Page 519

IMPLEMENTING OPERATIONS EXCELLENCE IN SMALL & MEDIUM

SIZED MANUFACTURING COMPANIES – USING LEAN-SIGMA

TECHNIQUES

Ashok Kumar Puri Abstract

In today’s critical manufacturing scenario various techniques are used by industries to

cut down their operating cost and increase the overall profit. In terms of manufacturing

this implies getting the maximums results with minimum input. In order to achieve this,

many new techniques have come up in manufacturing technology such as zero

inventories, zero defects, part per million etc. For this purpose Lean manufacturing and

Six Sigma are the methodologies which are adopted to achieve fruitful results both in

manufacturing and other areas. One such new concept, which is explained in this project,

is the synergy of Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma i.e. ‘LEAN SIGMA’. The same is

used in this project. In this project work Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma are

discussed at a right go. Their tools and techniques have been utilized to carry out the

results. To prove the methodology of LEAN SIGMA an experimental case study was

performed in a medium sized mass production manufacturing company, which utilized its

tools in order to reduce the die change over down time during production. Consecutive

experimental readings were taken before and after the project implementation to check

the different in the production down time. This project helped in removing all the

barriers during the die change over and helped to increase the overall productivity of the

press shop.



1. INTRODUCTION

During the last two decades quality management has been put forward by a number of its

promoters as a new management theory; however the description of quality management

differs. Quality management can be described as a management revolution, a

revolutionary philosophy of management, a new way thinking about the management of

organizations, a comprehensive way to improve total organizational performance, an

alternative to management by control or as a framework for competitive management.

Over the last two decades, Industrial organizations have embraced a wide variety of

management programs that they hope will enhance competition. Currently two of the

popular programs are Six Sigma and Lean Management. Six Sigma was founded by

Motorola Corporation and subsequently adopted by many US companies, including GE

& Allied sigma. Lean management originated at Toyota in Japan and has been

implemented by many major firms, including Danaher Corporation and Harley Davidson.

Six Sigma and lean management have got diverse roofs. The key issues driving the

development of Six Sigma was the need for quality improvement when manufacturing

complex products having a large numbers of components which often resulted in a

correspondingly high probability of defective final products. The driving force behind the

development of Lean Management was the elimination of waste, especially in Japan a

country with low natural resources and lesser continental area.

2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Sufficient data was collected from the Auto manufacturing industry for finding the

feasibility of implementation of LEAN SIGMA process. The Press and the weld shops



of the client company are manufacturing sheet metal based auto components for its

various OEMs. There is a mass production system and due to this there is a larger amount

of die change over time, which creates high machine capacity losses. In this report an

attempt has been made to increase the productivity of the weld shop and the press shop

by introducing LEAN SIGMA to reduce the die change over time and by creation of

uninterrupted process flow thru line balancing and optimum layouts.

3. OBJECTIVE

To study briefly about lean manufacturing.

To study briefly about Six Sigma.

To understand the synergies of lean manufacturing and Six Sigma

Using ‘LEAN SIGMA’ Tools reduce the die change over down time.

To save the total number of hours for scroll line press die.

To increase the overall productivity of the production process.

4. PURPOSE OF STUDY

The main focus of this study is to implement operations excellence in small and medium

sized companies with the lean and six sigma techniques.

5. HYPOTHESIS

Since my focus is to implement operations excellence in small and medium sized

companies so that how it could be helpful for these and how business improvement

would be done through this research thesis.

6. SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY



Offers bigger impact through projects tied with bottom line results.

Utilizes tools in a more focused and productive ways

Provides a process / strategy for project management that can be studied and

improved.

Increases communication between Management and Practitioners via project

presentations.

Gives employees and management views of how statistical tools can be of

significant value to organizations.

7. NEED OF STUDY

The study conducted has been done and submitted for the partial fulfillment of the

requirements of securing the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of

Management. The study aims at showing how important is concept of Manufacturing /

Operations Excellence in today’s context in the Indian manufacturing sector. The

concepts of Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma have been adopted in the Research

Project to achieve the goal.

8. SCOPE OF STUDY

To study the concepts of Lean and Six Sigma and apply the same in practice in an

industrial set up to demonstrate the power of the tools used.

9. METHODLOGY


International Research Journal of Management Science & Technology http:www.irjmst.com 23

A Research Methodology defines the purpose of the research, how it proceeds, how to

measure progress and what constitutes success with respect to the objectives determined

for carrying out the research study. It follows different sessions like

1. Start up session

2. Assess

3. Plan

4. Execute

10. RESULT

Converting the internal Set-ups to external ones reduces the Die change over time for the

Scroll Line Press in the Press Shop. This also involved the use of tools such as Lean

Manufacturing and Six Sigma Methodology. With lean manufacturing a number of non-

value adding activities were eliminated in both the SME cluster units and M/s Mehta

Engineers Ltd. At the same time six sigma tools such as Failure Mode and Effect

Analysis Diagram, Cause and Effect Matrix were used to target CTQ’s and their effect on

the process. This process helps in improving business performance.

11. REFERENCES

Books with Single Author:

Mahesh S. Raisinghani “Industrial Management & Data Systems”, Vol. 105, No.4,

pp. 491-505, 2005.

Mahajan. (2004), “Statistical Quality Control”

Halliday S. “So What Exactly is Six Sigma?” Vol. 54, No. 1, pp 15, 2001.



Pyzdek T. “A Roadmap for Quality Beyond Control”, Quality Progress Vol. 32, No.

12, pp 33-38, 1999.

Books with Two or more Authors:

Jiju Antony & Ricardo Banuelas “Measuring Business Excellence”, Vol. 6, No. 4,

pp. 20-27.2002.

Martand & Telsang “Types of Quality Management Systems”, 2004.

Henderson K.M. & Evans J.R. “Successful Implementation of Six Sigma:

benchmarking General Electric Company”, Vol. 7, No. 4,pp. 260-281,2000.

Journals:

Riitta Srneds “International Journal of Operations & Production Management”,

Vol. 14 No. 3, pp.66-82, 1994.

Hendricks. C.A. & Kelbaugh R. “Implementing Six Sigma At G.E.”, The Journal Of

Quality & Participation, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp 48-53, 1998

Miscellaneous Articles:

Jhamb L.C. “Techniques of Operation Efficiency”, SDLC, Pune, 2005.

Berger, A. (2003) Smart things to know about Six Sigma. Oxford, United

Kingdom: Oxford Capstone publishing.

Conner, G. (2002) Six sigma and other continuous improvement tools for the

small hop.

Imai M., Kaizen, McGraw Hill, New York, NY, 1986.



Magazine Articles:

Roy Andersson, Henrik Eriksson & Hakan Torstensson “The TQM Magazine”, Vol.

18, No. 3, pp. 282-296, 2006.

Websites:

Lean manufacturing resource guide: Retrieved December, 05, 2005 from

http://www.leanqad.com/educationlwhat~kanban.html.

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