Title: Lean manufacturing practices in textile industries - a case study

Authors: P.G. Saleeshya; P. Raghuram; N. Vamsi

Addresses: Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita University, Coimbatore – 641112, India ' Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita University, Coimbatore – 641112, India ' Wheels India Limited, Factory, Plot No. C-1, Ranjangaon Growth Centre, Karegaon Village, Shirur Taluk, Pune District – 412 210, Maharashtra, India

Abstract: Lean manufacturing is a philosophy of eliminating waste through continuous improvement. This paper is an outcome of a case study conducted in a textile industry in south India. Though the concept of lean manufacturing has shown good results in continuous process industry, it has not been extensively used as compared to discrete manufacturing industries. Process industries, especially textile industries, have automatic machinery which are highly inflexible and have high volume/low variety products. This nature of the textile industry makes implementing lean manufacturing techniques a challenge; hence implementing lean techniques in a textile industry has been taken up as a challenge. We have chosen a combination of value stream mapping (VSM), 5S, kanban, kaizen, poka-yoke, and visual controls to improve the processes. The achievement potential scores before and after lean implementation has been highlighted using radar diagrams. The findings of this study reveal that a thorough analysis of the process, setup, and changeover time (CO), use of colour coding for identification of volume-mix, use of kaizen and quality circles which empower the workforce, are some of the various keys to a successful lean implementation in a textile industry.

Keywords: lean manufacturing; agile manufacturing; value stream mapping; VSM; supply chain management; SCM; manufacturing agility; textile industry; India; 5S; kanban; kaizen; poka-yoke; visual controls; changeover time; colour coding; quality circles; continuous improvement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCENT.2012.052367

International Journal of Collaborative Enterprise, 2012 Vol.3 No.1, pp.18 - 37

Received: 29 Mar 2012
Accepted: 27 Aug 2012
Published online: 10 Apr 2015 *

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