Productivity and quality improvement by implementing line balancing and value stream mapping techniques in leather industry a case study

Abstract

Higher productivity with perfect quality and meeting lead time are the basic concerns for manufacturers. All operational challenges are surrounded to these concerns and prime approaches to achieve customer satisfaction. In Bangladesh, leather sector is one of the largest export earnings sector. Leather products is the major manufacturing and exporting item of this sector. Leather products manufacturing is going to robust by the next decade due to easy availability of raw materials, cheap work force. This is the high time to develop all backward linkage and improve productivity in leather products manufacturing. A lot of operational tasks involved in leather products making; once the productivity becomes high, the quality falls and vice-versa. Implementation of quality and productivity improvement techniques is becoming the most intelligent parts. Yamazumi line balancing and Value Stream Mapping (VSM) techniques has been applied to improve quality and productivity in a leather products manufacturing industry in Bangladesh as a case study. A little number of research work was carried out before on this regard. This thesis is a visualization of the possibilities for flow oriented production system, distribution of workload among various workstations and eliminating non-value added works to reduce lead time. The outcome of this thesis showed that the quality and productivity can be significantly increased. Therefore, similar type manufacturer can use this thesis outcome as a knowledge base to mitigate challenges to produce perfect quality products with increased productivity within the production flow. It is expected that, extended study can further be conducted based on this thesis outcome in future and can be applied in a large scale industry.