Waste and Cost Reduction for a Water Bottling Process Using Lean Six Sigma

Ovundah King Wofuru-Nyenke, Barinyima Nkoi and Felix Ezekiel Oparadike
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Ovundah King Wofuru-Nyenke: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria
Barinyima Nkoi: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria
Felix Ezekiel Oparadike: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

European Journal of Engineering and Technology Research, 2019, vol. 4, issue 12, 71-77

Abstract: In this paper, Lean Six Sigma tools and techniques were utilized to determine the root causes of waste in a water bottling process and proffer solutions to remove these sources of waste in order to produce only standard quality items with minimal to zero waste generated, and also to attain a reduction in production cost. The Value Stream Map (VSM) tool was used to highlight the sources of waste in the current state of operations at the plant, as well as to proffer an improved future state of the production processes at the plant. Also, the Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) framework of Lean Six Sigma methodology was employed to statistically analyze the root causes of waste in the plant. The analysis showed that the major sources of waste which constitute approximately 80 per cent of waste in the plant are water volume variation, alignment error in the shrink wrapping machine and manual inspection. After implementation of the proposed solutions, manufacturing lead time and cycle time are expected to reduce by approximately 42.1 per cent and 22.2 per cent respectively, with a reduction of 2 quality inspectors in the bottling process, leading to a drop in labour cost.

Keywords: Lean Six Sigma; Value Stream Map; Waste Reduction; Water bottling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:epw:ejeng0:v:4:y:2019:i:12:id:61682

DOI: 10.24018/ejeng.2019.4.12.1682

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