Improvement of SME’s Manufacturing and Supply Process Flow: A Case Study

Abstract

Small Medium Enterprise (SME) within the manufacturing industry of South Africa needs to be nourished as they contribute significantly to economy. Evaluation of a SME manufacturing facility resulted with areas of improvement. The current manufacturing process was manually operated , for instance, from raw materials feeding into a mixing equipment to finished goods packaging, suppliers of raw materials being manually notified and customers placing orders on a manual ordering system. Proposal of a semi-automated manufacturing process was initiated as an improvement of the current traditional process by consideration of design principles and introduction of components such as flow control valves, stock level sensor/detector, conveyor belt, automated guided vehicle and SAP system and LOGON system. Integration of systems that adds to Enterprise Resource Planning were also recommended which can further improve the supply chain network. Simulation and modelling of the traditional manufacturing process and the proposed process of manufacturing that was improved were conducted by making use of Arena simulation software version 16.0. The outcome indicated an improvement potential of higher material input and material outputs at maintained processing efficiencies. It was concluded that the adoption of the proposed manufacturing process improvement can assist in improving the supply chain from raw material acquisition to product availability to customers.