Increasing Productivity of Furniture Factory with Lean Manufacturing Techniques (Case Study)

Abstract

Lean manufacturing techniques are mostly applied in large enterprises and companies that produce more technological products. In this study, productivity has been increased by the application of lean production techniques in SMEs that produces simpler products and has a lower education level of employees. For this, as the first step, Pareto analysis is performed on the sales and production data of the previous year, and the target product family is selected for improvement. In the next step of the study, improvement projects are determined with the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) method, and then productivity increases are achieved by using Kaizen, 5S, standard work, layout plan, and single-piece flow techniques. As a result of the applications, a decrease was achieved in the production process times and the number of quality defects, and at the end of one year, a 29% reduction in total workmanship is observed.