Analysis and Improvement of an Assembly Line in the Automotive Industry

Abstract

In a market as competitive as the automotive industry, it becomes increasingly important for the organizations to adopt a culture of continuous improvement, which should cross-over all stakeholders in the organization. The continuous improvement of the processes, the increase in efficiency, and the elimination of waste, leads to a considerable increase in market competitiveness, not only economically, but also technologically. The focus of this work was the optimization of a production line, with the main goal being the increase of its productive capacity, so that it can comply with customer’s requests. Thus, it was defined as a goal of this project: to increase the productive capacity to 1800 parts/day. The methodologies used were based on several continuous improvements and lean techniques, such as line balancing, standard work, visual management and 5S. The work developed allowed an increase of 37% of the production line capacity and an increase of 22% in the OEE of the production line.