Downtime Reduction Driven by Evaluation of Material Unavailability

Abstract

In the manufacturing & life-sciences industry, increased competition has forced a cost-reduction philosophy in what was once a highly profitable business. Manufacturers now need to maintain or improve time to market and quality while keeping low costs. For this reason, manufacturing firms are now focusing on improving their processes to reduce sources of waste, including the waste of downtime in manufacturing processes. When a manufacturing process stops for an unplanned event it creates downtime. It is particularly important to define the difference between downtime and small process interruptions. For this design project, we define downtime as any unplanned stop that is five minutes or longer. For most manufacturers downtime is the single largest source of lost production time. It receives a high level of attention if productivity is affected due to material unavailability, especially when they estimate their downtime or manually record downtimes for each occurrence. This paper presents the process improvement using the DMAIC approach. DMAIC proved to be the most preferred technique for the defect identification and process improvement by use of various tools. As a result, the efficiency of the process will increase by the reduction of downtime up to 20%. Key Terms - Downtime, DMAIC, Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma