Lean Manufacturing Study Of Emulsion Process In A Company

Lean manufacturing is one kind of creative production management mode, which was generated from Toyota after Second World War. The core values of “Lean thinking” include pull customer demand, waste elimination and continuous improvements. The key element of lean production is to eliminate all ineffective activities and get rid of all inventories, which are treated as the biggest “waste” in company. Lean manufacturing mode can help company run business and gain profit with lowest cost and investment. In addition, it helps company build up flexible production capability to deal with dynamic market change with minimized inventory. In total, study of lean process based on value stream analysis and waste elimination are the ways, which put the whole production process map into consideration and figure out the solution instead of dealing with pieces of local “opportunities”.In order to keep the leading competency and enlarge its market share to catch up customer demand in silicon industry, A company introduces and implements Lean Production in emulsion polymerization workshop to eliminate production waste and reduce production batch time. During the implementation of lean activities in emulsion polymerization workshop, many lean tools have been put into practices to identify opportunities in current process activities and help figure out the non-value added steps in production line.The paper uses process analysis and value stream map to eliminate non-value added activities and improve process bottom neck. Compared with the original production line performance, the maximum output rate increased from 10.72 kg per minute to 14.16 kg per minute, which contributed 32% productivity optimization. In addition, the operators’ working time decreased from 662 minutes to 510 minutes, which resulted in 23% workload improvement.