Title: Lean manufacturing in biscuit manufacturing plant: a case

Authors: Nitin Upadhye, S.G. Deshmukh, Suresh Garg

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Ideal Institute of Technology, Govindpuram, Ghaziabad (UP), 201 002, India. ' ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Morena Link Road, Gwalior, 474010, India. ' Mechanical Engineering Department, Delhi College of Engineering, New Campus, Bawana Road, New Delhi 110 042, India

Abstract: Day by day the intensifying global competition is throwing challenges in the form of uncertainty and fluctuation in demand, necessity to provide wide variety to attract and hold the ever demanding customer. To survive and succeed under such competitive environment, organisations are forced to find and adopt efficient and effective ways for their operations. Organisations are seeking ways to increase the value of their products and services by eliminating unnecessary processes and practices from all systems. Lean manufacturing is a systematic team-based approach for finding and eliminating waste. The implementation of Lean manufacturing system helps organisations to reduce lead-time and inventory, improve quality, and achieve better on-time deliveries and utilisation of resources leading towards increased sales and profit through customer satisfaction. The Indian biscuit industry is the third largest manufacturer of biscuit in the world producing around 60% of the total production in organised sector and the balance 40% by the unorganised bakeries. In this paper, a medium sized biscuit manufacturing plant is studied under the framework of lean manufacturing system and observed that 5S, kaizen, quick changeover, TPM and TEI are some of the tools, which can be effectively used to improve equipment availability, reduce wastage of material and improve quality.

Keywords: lean manufacturing; productivity; kaizen; 5S; total employee involvement; TEI; total productive maintenance; TPM; continuous improvement; biscuit manufacturing; India; quick changeover; waste reduction; quality improvement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOM.2010.034589

International Journal of Advanced Operations Management, 2010 Vol.2 No.1/2, pp.108 - 139

Published online: 10 Aug 2010 *

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