Publication

Abstract : Lean Manufacturing refers to the different strategies adopted by companies in order to reduce cost and increase quantity and well as quality by reducing lead times and other anomalies in a production line, which would upset the customers. Hence, as a part of productions and operations, lean manufacturing plays a vital role in the survival of any company. This paper elicits a comparison between the push and pull production system and the advantages of implementing the latter in any manufacturing industry. A kanban based pull system in a manufacturing industry has been depicted in this paper. On a practical level, it has been observed that there is a continuous loss of Kanban cards in between the finishing processes due to which the implementation of the pull system has proved to be difficult. A Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based Kanban system has been presented in this paper which was applied to an element manufacturing plant to increase the effectiveness of the Kanban system and hence tackle the problem. Value Stream Mapping was done on the current state of the process and future state was designed with a goal to improve the process. The case study conducted includes the method of calculating the number of kanbans as a part of implementing the pull system. The ultimate goal boils down to improving the customer fulfillment with steps taken to reduce the lead time, maintain a minimum inventory buffer size in the supermarket. After an inventory check across the lines, the results show a significant drop in inventory and an improvement in the process parameters leading to customer fulfillment.