Productivity Improvement through Cycle Time Reduction and Line Balancing: A Case Study of Machine Shop

Competitiveness among the manufacturing industries is rapidly increasing because of industrialization. In today’s era, every manufacturing industry is trying to produce low cost products with superior quality and with propriety to deliver them in stipulated time period. Every manufacturing organisation needs appropriate system to produce high quality products in minimum cycle time, which can be achieved by maintaining higher productivity. In this research study, an attempt has been made to enhance the productivity of automotive component oil pan by reducing the machining cycle time and balancing the line to avoid unwanted movement of work piece and bottlenecks. It has been found that by incorporating CBN cutters and spot facing tool in machining, cycle time has been reduced by 7.02minutes per job. U type machine layout has been suggested to balance the production line.It has been observed that, with reduction of cycle time by 7.02 minutes per job, production capacity per shift can be increased from current 28 jobs per shift to 36 jobs per shift. With machining of additional 8 jobs per shift, production capacity of oil pan can be increased from 2000 jobs per month to 2900 jobs per month. Keywords: Productivity, Cycle Time Reduction, Line Balancing, Machine Shop