Lean Automated Production Improvement Research Based On M Company Production Line Balance

M is a professional manufacturer of step motor, servo motor and brushless motor. Ranking among top ten in terms of its scale of production after over ten years of development, M is also a main international supplier. With growing competition in market, it is of great strategic value to conduct a lean improvement in production management to lower cost, and to promote productivity and service at the same time.This paper studies the lean production line automation of step motor-the core product of M. Using tools like Value Stream Mapping to implement a lean strategy in assembly line, this paper illustrates various problems in work flow which expressed in the forms of low production efficiency and low on time delivery, high interim inventory, and low product percent of pass. Meanwhile, this paper reveals the fundamental causes of those problems, which focus on several aspects from low balance ratio in production line, unreasonable arrangement and process flows, to long period of production planning management process, to a lack of frock fool-proofing in traditional belt line and operation away from one piece flow. Starting from lean production and then catering to the characteristics of motor assembly process and logistics, this paper proposes industrial engineering and other modern management theory and methods, which includes arrangement, changing and adjustment of the overall field production pattern, process flows integration, an optimized one piece flow of action decomposition and balancing, planned management of boards and frock fool-proofing, and automatic collecting of quality data, thus eliminating unnecessary transport in traditional belt line, stagnation of semi-finished products and other non-value added activities. Eventually an automatic One Piece Flow production pattern can be achieved.By implementing the improving program of lean production process, several key performance indexes in production&operation management have been increased. These indexes include punctual product delivery rate from91%to99.1%, production efficiency which increased by about32%, saving about2million circulating capital, production cycle which shorten by10days, first-pass yield and quality stability both which increased significantly.