Lean Approach to Enhance Manufacturing Productivity: A Case Study of Saudi Arabian Factory

Abstract

In a present competitive market, manufacturing industries are compelled to follow a systematic approach to understand and improve manufacturing plant performance. A variety of management tools and philosophies are adopted by different industries to identify areas of opportunity for minimization of waste and maximization of production productivity. Lean manufacturing is a philosophy of waste minimization, productivity enhancement and continuous improvement. This paper considers Saudi Arabian factory as a case study. Accordingly, an approach is presented to measure the manufacturing plant performance and total productivity. Productivity benchmarking is done based on baseline productivity, and manufacturing plant performance index. The detailed case study analysis is done by gathering data from different manufacturing departments. By adopting lean approach, the manufacturing industry was able to improve its performance in each manufacturing departments. After improvement, the whole manufacturing plant performance index improved from 0.77 to 0.86, and the total factor productivity is increased by 11.45%. This case study focuses on resources utilization, man and material movements, production bottlenecks and percentage rejection. Thus, this paper is about the application of lean tools in a company and proposing an approach to apply it in Saudi Arabian factory, and the results can be applied to any other manufacturing company.