ENHANCING EFFICIENCY OF THE LEAN MANUFACTURING PROCESS: A CASE STUDY OF WOODEN FURNITURE MANUFACTURER

Abstract

The objective of this research is to study the problems arising in the production process, and reduce wastage according to Lean concept. The goal of the research is to reduce the number of activities in the production process and reduce the total time of the wood furniture manufacturing process. The investigation explored the work process to produce the current flow process chart and value stream diagram. Then the researcher analyzed the work process of each activity to determine the loss that occurred in the manufacturing process and proposed a solution from the cause-and-effect diagram. Moreover, the ECRS principle was adopted to decrease the loss in the manufacturing process. Then the researcher made the flow process chart and the value stream diagram after improvement to compare the productions before and after the improvement following the Lean manufacturing process. The findings revealed that the application of the ECRS principle could be used to reduce loss and reduce activities and the total manufacturing process time. There were 229 activities before improvement, and 166 activities remained (reduced by 63 activities). This performance increased the efficiency of the production process by 27.52%. The average manufacturing time before improvement was 3,234.48 minutes, reduced to 2,966.62 minutes. The performance could reduce by 267.86 minutes while enhancing time efficiency by 8.29%