SHOP FLOOR RE-ENGINEERING USING CELL MANUFACTURING
By: M. Raja Chidambaram
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
M. Raja Chidambaram is Director, M//s URS Productively, India.
ABSTRACT
Effective Operations Management is a key strategy for any manufacturing organization to successfully maintain a competitive edge and profitability. For labor intensive industry such as leather, which is characterized by many complex operational variables, efforts to improve operational effectiveness will certainly result in lesser product cost and more value addition from resources.
The key performance measures of operations management are throughput time, quicker turnaround of inventory, less WIP, and quick response to customers. This can be achieved by identifying and removing non value added activities and aligning the value added activities toward clearly stated business goals. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is a powerful tool which helps in organizational restructuring to achieve this. Out of many themes proposed by BPR , Cell manufacturing is particularly effective in improving operation efficiency in shop floor.
This paper discusses about the implementation of cell manufacturing systems in a leather glove manufacturing in India.