Towards a Smart and Sustainable Industry : Cycle Time optimization

Abstract

Beyond a simple concern for the company's picture, the global competition requires cost reduction, process rationalization and on-time delivery of customers to remain economically viable and competitive. This needs a continuous improvement and a sustainable strategy, but before this phase, it is necessary to find the influential parameters and put them under control in order to stabilize the process. For this, we referred to Lean Six-Sigma (LSS) tools. In this paper, we concentrate on the wastes that affect the cycle times to produce the good within a process recently implemented. We opted to apply the LSS for the reduction of manufacturing time overruns using the DMAIC concept (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control). The proposed case is tested in an aeronautic company. First, we identified the bottleneck in the process. Secondly, we measured the time of each operation of this process and map them via a Value Stream Mapping (VSM). We identified the root causes in the third section. Finally, we established an action plan to improve the process and control the different solutions. As a result, the process cycle efficiency was increased by 16 per cent. Thus, the effectiveness of the proposed method was demonstrated.