IJERT-Productivity Improvement Through Lean Manufacturing Tools: A Case Study on Ethiopian Garment Industry (original) (raw)

2014, International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology (IJERT)

https://www.ijert.org/productivity-improvement-through-lean-manufacturing-tools-a-case-study-on-ethiopian-garment-industry https://www.ijert.org/research/productivity-improvement-through-lean-manufacturing-tools-a-case-study-on-ethiopian-garment-industry-IJERTV3IS090977.pdf Traditionally operated garment industries are facing problems. The problems inherent include longer production lead time, high rework, poor line balancing, lack of standardized work process and performance measurement system for the employee, high work-in-process, low production capacity, high labor (operator) absenteeism, high rework, high fabric waste and poor resource utilization are among others. Adama Garment Industry (AGI), Adama, (Ethiopia) is one of such industries facing these problems. Improving productivity through quantitative research methods and different lean manufacturing tools such as standardization of work process, line balancing, and 5S were used to identify the problems and to address the solutions. By understanding the major problem, the application of these lean manufacturing tools and their benefits were examined. Using time study, the standard allowable minute (SAM) of a military T-shirt model product was fixed to 34.16 min./shirt. After line balancing, the number of labors required to produce equal amount of garment, sewing direct labor cost per production line and per unit and production target is reduced by 24.65% (average),while production capacity, total labor productivity, sewing machine productivity was increased by 30.6% (average), and real line efficiency increased from 55.59% to 83.3%. Similarly, before and after implementation of 5S photographs show improved results, and 41m 2 free areas has been utilized in the cutting section. The implication of this study can provide the complete feasibility report for implementation of lean tools, minimization of waste and effective utilize resource in garment industry for improving productivity. In this study it is recommended to implement full lean manufacturing (LM) tools and to use international standard data as a bench mark for better production system and competitiveness of the garment industry.