LEAN APPLICATIONS TO IMPROVE CHEMICAL LABORATORY PRODUCTION CAPACITY IN THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY

Abstract

Lean literature suggests that the attitude of “wait and see” has not yet allowed textile professionals to adopt Lean in production, especially in the laboratory. To fill this gap, the author illustrated a case study in a chemical laboratory of a renowned knit composite industry in Bangladesh. A team of textile and industrial engineers observed all processes in the laboratory from start to end for two years to detect problems and then conducted four brainstorming sessions with Lean experts to generate solutions to those issues which are finally presented for capacity improvement through dyeing machines’ capacity optimization, lead time evaluation, lab room temperature optimization, facility layout redesign, quick worksheet preparation, and workplace organization. This study proves that Lean applies to any process improvement. Also, data obtained in this research is highly valuable for textile engineers for future research and readily available for Value Stream Mapping.