Abstract: The implementation of lean manufacturing initiatives has produced significant impacts in improving operational performance and reducing manufacturing wastes in the production process. However, selecting an appropriate set of lean strategies is critical to avoid misapplication of the lean manufacturing techniques and consequential increase in non-value-adding activities. To the author’s best knowledge, there is currently no methodology to select lean strategies that considers their impacts on manufacturing wastes and performance metrics simultaneously. In this research, a multi-objective methodology is proposed that suggests an appropriate set of lean initiatives based on their impacts on performance metrics and manufacturing wastes and within manufacturers’ resource limitation. The proposed methodology in this research suggests the best set of lean initiatives for implementation that have highest impacts on identified critical performance metrics and manufacturing wastes. Therefore, manufacturers can assure that implementing suggested lean tools improves their production performance and reduces manufacturing wastes at the same time. A case study was conducted to show the effectiveness and validate the proposed model and methodologies.
Abstract: Indian manufacturing firms operating in rapidly changing and highly competitive market, over the last few decades, have embraced organization-wide transformation to achieve cultural and operational excellence. In recent years, numerous approaches have been proposed to improve business and manufacturing performance. Lean practices in particular, Total Productive Management (TPM) and Total Quality Management (TQM) have received considerable attention, as they being adopted and adapted for raising the performance standard of Indian manufacturing firms to world class levels. The complementary nature of TPM and TQM is being practiced in many companies to achieve synergy. Specifically, this research investigates whether joint TPM-TQM implementation contribute to higher business performance when compared to individual implementation. Data from 160 manufacturing firms were analyzed that demonstrate synergetic implementation of both TPM-TQM practices over a reasonable period of time, contributed in delivering better business performance as compared to individual implementation strategy.
Abstract: MSMEs are regarded as the sunrise sector of the
Indian economy in view of its large potential for growth and likely
socio economic impact specifically on employment and income
generation. In today’s competitive business environment, global
competition forces companies to continuously seek ways of
improving their products and services. The pressure on organizations
to adapt to new technologies and external threats requires
resourcefulness, creativity and innovation. Market has become more
open, competitive and customers more demanding. Without
continuous technology innovation, no organization can ever remain
competitive. Innovations reflect a critical way in which organizations
respond to either technological or market challenges. The need of the
market is to deliver high quality products through continuous
changing in features in product, improve existing products, reduce
their cost, and improve employee skills, training, technology
infrastructure and financial policies. Therefore, the key factor of
organization’s ability to change is innovation. The study presents a
detailed review of literature on the role of technology innovation in
improving manufacturing performance of industries.
Abstract: Consider a mass production of HDD arms where
hundreds of CNC machines are used to manufacturer the HDD arms.
According to an overwhelming number of machines and models of
arm, construction of separate control chart for monitoring each HDD
arm model by each machine is not feasible. This research proposed a
strategy to optimize the SPC management on shop floor. The
procedure started from identifying the clusters of the machine with
similar manufacturing performance using clustering technique. The
three way control chart ( I - MR - R ) is then applied to each
clustered group of machine. This proposed research has
advantageous to the manufacturer in terms of not only better
performance of the SPC but also the quality management paradigm.
Abstract: Green supply chain management is an increasingly recognized practice among companies that are seeking to improve environmental performance. Of particular concern is how to arouse organizational awareness and put green activities into practice in
order to enhance manufacturing performances. This paper investigates the correlation of green supply chain practices and
manufacturing performances in Malaysian certified MS ISO 14000 manufacturing firms. The findings shows that green supply chain
practices which that can be denominated product recycling, environmental compliance and optimization have significant influence to some of the manufacturing performances.