Publication: Productivity improvement by using plan do-check-act cycle in an assembly line: a case study
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Date
2023-07-14
Authors
Mohamad Haiqal bin Mohamad Akhir
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Abstract
The case study explores the application of Kaizen, a continuous improvement approach, to address productivity issues in an electronic assembly company. The company faced challenges with low output from the assembly line, failing to meet daily targets which is 4000 units. The output for current assembly line is around 3500 units only. The assembly line is operated 6 days per week, 10 hours per day, and overtime work is needed to make up the shortfall. This case study aimed to improve productivity to deliver product as per planned schedule by the customer while only working 10 hours per day without the need of overtime. The PDCA cycle served as the methodology for identifying the root causes of the problem and proposing potential countermeasures. The data such as cycle time are collected for each process in the assembly to conduct the root cause analysis including the fishbone diagram method. Based on the analysis, the soldering process cause the bottleneck in the assembly process. Through comprehensive study, the potential countermeasures were developed and tested using Witness Horizon to evaluate the effectiveness of those countermeasures. The countermeasure 1 was selected for final implementation as it is the only countermeasure that shows reduction in time taken to achieve targeted output. After implementing the countermeasure, the time taken for the soldering process to reach 4000 units was reduced from 10 hours 33 minutes to 9 hours 20 minutes which is around 10% reduction.