Smart lean in ring spinning—a case study to improve performance of yarn manufacturing process

Abstract

Most of textile companies in the world are operating in a fluctuating and uncertain environment. Despite laying the first brick of TPS (Toyota Production System), textile industry still lacks necessary leanness in its internal and external processes to buffer against the intensifying competition. In order to dust off this traditional and neglected industry, innovative smart techniques and methodologies from academia and practitioners are needed. In this research paper, first textile industry and its compatibility with Lean Manufacturing (LM) and System of Systems (SoS) approach has been explored. Then the detailed current value stream mapping (VSM) was drawn to map and highlight the weaknesses of processes during the case study accomplished at a spinning mill located in Pakistan. In order to address the unveiled issues, a Smart Lean Spinning Framework was envisaged integrating SoS ideas with the prudently screened and selected LM tools, apt to textile industry. Subsequently, the proposed framework was simulated to evaluate the impacts of diverse parameters. The impressive results obtained by modeling and simulation encouraged us to put our prospective model to test. The outcome after implementation has been depicted in Smart Lean VSM and later transfigured into appropriate diagrams that show significant improvements. In this way, the research work also implicitly adapts and adopts lean tools of discrete manufacturing to process industry.