Title: Implementing lean paradigm in an Indian foundry facility: a case study

Authors: Sanjiv Kumar Tiwari; Ritesh Kumar Singh; Sharad Chandra Srivastava

Addresses: Department of Production Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Deoghar Campus, Jasidih, Deoghar, Jharkhand, 814142 India ' Department of Production Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, 835215 India ' Department of Production Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, 835215 India

Abstract: This article seeks to establish the effectiveness of lean manufacturing in eliminating the hidden wastes, maintaining better inventory control and reducing the total production time. A large Indian foundry facility is utilised to illustrate the adopted approach. Firstly, current state mapping is prepared to have the knowledge of the existing procedure followed in the production of castings. In addition, relevant data such as, cycle time, changeover time, percentage of defects, percentage downtime and inventory in between the processes are collected for each process. Further, the future state map is created, after amending the entire process, by adopting the methodology proposed by Rother and Shook (1999). Additionally, the required buffer size (number of Kanbans) at each stage and the sequence of production are also estimated by adopting the method advocated by the Smalley (2004). Finally, improvement is accounted in terms of reduced lead time of the process.

Keywords: lean manufacturing; value stream mapping; VSM; Kanban; supermarket; pull system.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2020.106791

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2020 Vol.36 No.1, pp.20 - 41

Received: 12 May 2017
Accepted: 18 Feb 2018
Published online: 21 Apr 2020 *

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