Productivity improvement of automobile service facility- a case study

Abstract

Service and maintenance work of commercial vehicle is a regular phenomenon and to resume running the vehicle for earning money and installment payment, the shortest possible work process time is usually a crying need of each customer. Most of the automobile companies in Bangladesh are practicing conventional method to improve service productivity and thus significant changes in this arena have not been visualized yet. This is the high time to implement effective process improvement tools and techniques in automobile service operation. Kaizen is the Japanese word for "continual improvement". In business, kaizen refers to activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees. On the other hand, Line balancing is the assignment of work to stations in a line as to achieve the desired output rate with the smallest number of workstations. The goal of line balancing is to obtain workstations with well-balanced workload. All the works in automobile service facility are divided into 2 main categories i.e. a) Major Work b) Minor Work and each of the tasks is again subdivided into periodic, predictive and failure maintenance. Any service operation can be seen from a system point of view: Inputs (material, labor, capital, energy & information) go into the system & outputs-repaired object. Productivity is a very important measure in service operations because it provides insight into the efficiency & effectiveness of operations and focuses as customer can avail their required job done within lesser time frame. Major Engine overhauling is the most time consuming job of any commercial vehicle and thus productivity of this work is very important measure from service point of view. Improvement in this specific job is highly demanded.. The present study focuses on improvement of the overall productivity of automobile service facility through VSM methodology using selected KAIZEN tools and line balancing techniques. And a case study-engine overhauling, troubleshooting of fuel ignition pump and washing bay in a large automobile service facility have been considered and productiveness is compared before and after implementing the technique.