Abstract:
The objective of this research is to reduce wastes and balance the production line to improve productivity in the production process of main exhaust mufflers. The improvement focuses on reducing wastes in transportation, unnecessary stock, over production, unnecessary movement and delay per idle time. Recently, the demand of the mufflers has significantly grown from 3,170 pieces per month to 27,000 pieces per month. Therefore, the production line needs to be improved to cope with this surge in the demand. ECRS principle has been applied to reduce wastes in the production line. Then the line is balanced based on the new takt time. The results show that the new production line requires an increase in the number of workers from 2 to 4, but the total production time is reduced from 50.1 hours to only 18.6 hours (or 62 percent reduction). This new production line needs no new investment and the increase in wages of the workers is paid off by the increase in the profit made from the new demand