Lean production for technology management: Increasing production, reducing waste and quality improvement strategies in a plastic bags manufacturing facility

Given the pressures generated by the global economy, the manufacturing sector is faced with the problem of continually improving production rates and quality while cutting costs. The pressures are especially keen in the smaller manufacturing plants where resources are scant, margins are small, and skilled labor is in short supply. The introduction of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) in recent years has proven to be an important innovation to the production process, resulting in improved production and quality. However, any manufacturing process is subject to a large number of factors that are not necessarily sensitive to or controlled by a PLC. The application of relatively simple algorithms reflecting the complexity of a given production process is not likely. This project focused on a small manufacturer of plastic bags to identify the critical and non-critical factors of production and develop a strategy for the firm to manage those critical factors in order to improve production rates and quality while decreasing waste. This required the mapping of the production process, the identification of those elements that have the greatest impact on production rate and quality, and the development of a technology management system to monitor and control these sensitive elements. A systems dynamics model describing the production system abstract relationships was also developed as a tool for determining cost, quality, and schedule impacts and an enterprise perspective of the ROIC of the production system. The results of the project demonstrated a strategy that could achieve all three objectives for the company, namely increased productivity, quality, and reduced waste, all of which drive bottom line financial improvements, a key performance outcome in any lean enterprise.