OPTIMIZATION OF LEAN MANUFACTURING IN SHEET METALS

Abstract

The term “lean” was coined by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones in the book “The Machine That Changed the World”, Lean manufacturing denotes to a manufacturing enhancement process based on the ultimate goal of Toyota production system in order to diminish or eradicate waste though maximizing production flow. Many industrial organizations realize the significance of implementing lean techniques. However, few organizations apply lean techniques with the necessary knowledge and proven tools to achieve it. A value stream contains all the operations and processes to transform raw materials into finished goods or services, including non-value accumulating activities. Value stream management is a management execution for planning a production procedure including lean initiatives through methodical data acquisition and analysis. It is a confirmed process for designing and developments that will allow companies to implement lean practices. Today‟s business development is entirely reliant on the productivity and the customer satisfaction through in-time delivery and services. This thesis addresses the application of lean manufacturing in sheet metal industry. The aim of this study and practical analysis is to investigate how to improve the productivity and in time delivery as expected by customers. In a sheet metal industry, there is always a big challenge for improvement in the productivity of the plant. In this project work carried out is totally an Industry based, Sigma-SMS was visited by me on the weekly basis by the written permission of our Pro V.C S.K Garg, where many sheet metal processes such as blanking, punching, bending, drawing, trimming, riveting of sheets etc. are carried out, there after studying and closing observing these different operations I found out a part named CN-30, this part is the male part of drum brake of Ford motors, on that part 14 operations are carried out after that it goes to the Continental Automotive for brake pad assembly. During the manufacturing of this part on the 7th operation of trimming area of trimming seen was more which with the help of employs working in Sigma-SMS was reduced by simply reducing the initial blank size, by change in the die that are fabricated in the tool room with the direct consultation of the design and development department. 6 After the successful change in the die design, the trimmed part got reduced and hence leads to a direct cost saving of the company; hence data was collected for the part production, scrap elimination and from there Taguchi optimization tool was applied on the variables of scrap going out to the market fluctuating rates/Kg of mild steel to get correlations between the values so as to maximize the profit as per when to produce and how much to produce as the monthly production goes upto around ten thousand. Finally a regression analysis was also applied to calculate cost equation and graphical correlations for leading factors.