Integrating process improvement methodologies to increase manufacturing industry success

Abstract

Manufacturing is still an important area of modern civilisation and various companies use improvement methodologies to improve their competitive edge. The purpose of the research was to determine the breakdown of each improvement methodologies used in the manufacturing industry and it set out to determine how to structure a hybrid methodology. It also identified inhibitors that need to be managed to improve improvement methodology implementation. This was then integrated into a hybrid improvement methodology called DaMi-TLS. This study found that 24% of the manufacturing industry still use Lean manufacturing followed by 17% using Lean Six Sigma. Furthermore 10% still use TQM and 7% use TOC. Although not considered improvement methodologies, 12% of manufacturing industries use Cost saving and 13% of use ISO 9001 as mean means to advance their business. The main inhibitors to process improvement implementation was found to be Change Management, Time inhibitors and Impression as well as Analysis and Interaction. These inhibitors was built into the framework to improve implementation success. The DaMi-TLS framework consists of the following steps: Define and Align, Manage inhibitors, Identify bottleneck, Exploit constraint using Lean tools, Exploit constraint using Six Sigma tools, Subordinate to constraint, Elevate constraint.