IMPROVING PROCESS QUALITY BY NEW LEAN SIX SIGMA METHODOLOGY FOR REVAMPING ONLINE PRODUCTION LINE TRAINING

Abstract

Factories of today are stuck in severe crisis, so continually striving to improve process quality to reduce both time and costs and add more control procedures to processes. Lean Six Sigma (LSS) derives from Lean thinking and mathematical use of sigma in statistics as a standard deviation for measuring variability; using DMAIC and process mapping to reduce process variation. The LSS process pervades all business aspects such as management, design, production and customer satisfaction. The chronic problems have a solution in the new LSS using timed place Petri net (TPPN), which is a graphical tool used to control and model functional, information, dynamic behavior and decisions aspects of the interrelationship between processes to understand where and how improvements might be made. So, it help in eliminating the causes of problems that absorb resources and create no value to satisfy customer and commensurate with his needs to reduce the discrepancies between actual and planned. Value stream mapping (VSM) is LSS tool used to map the current state and to identify source of waste to eliminate, and map the future state. To quantify the benefits gained from using the new LSS tool in the value stream mapping, a TPPN model was developed to provide the VSM with online data, to get a dynamic VSM which make a continuous system control. This work addresses the application of LSS concepts using TPPN to the continuous production processes sector with a focus on the ceramic industry.