The effectiveness and impacts of one piece flow manufacturing technique into manufacturing industries

Abstract

One-piece flow means that parts are moved through operations from step to step with no work-inprocess (WIP) in between either one piece at a time or a small batch at a time. This system works best in combination with a cellular layout in which all necessary equipment is located within a cell in the sequence in which it is used. The paper presents a case study on a newly constructed cellular manufacturing system with one piece flow technique adopted by an electronic assembly factory as the final assembly process. The aim of the research is to study the effectiveness of the one piece flow activities in term of productivity, quality and impacts the result into organization those are apply one piece flow as a their technique in manufacturing process. The results from this paper are the batch production system gives more problems into industries comparing with one piece flow technique. The main problem such as high inventory in production area which is needs more space and extra manpower to handle the inventory. As a mention in seven types of wastes, inventory is a larger enemy in modern production because it gives high impacts into company’s budget. By running one piece flow technique the company manage to minimize the space, reduce number of employee and at the same time will reduce the operating cost. In overall, the purpose of this paper is to study the effectiveness of the one piece flow concept in manufacturing industry in term of productivity, improvement process and cost reduction. Productivity will increase because reducing the number of inventory; control the work in progress (WIP) in between the work station and increase the morale and quality awareness of employee. Improvement process in term of reducing number of reject rate because in batch production, if found the reject; one batch will go for the rescreening of will be reject. Comparing to the one piece flow, if found the reject; only one piece will reject and not affect the whole batch. Indirectly, these activities will improve the effective cost in manufacturing process.