Sustainability of the production process by applying Lean manufacturing through the PDCA cycle – A Case Study in the machinery industry

This paper presents a case study of the practical application of the PDCA cycle as a problem-solving methodology in the company for the production of welded excavator frames, which occurred due to the increase of the customer demand resulting from the variation of the global market. The objective of this research is to implement the Lean tool to ensure the sustainability of the production process while improving efficiency by at least 8-10% on a monthly basis. The Value Stream Map was applied to visually see the entire production process, as well as to identify the root causes of losses. Thereafter, Heijunka was employed to levelling production operations, ensuring the rational use of all available resources. By applying the Lean and PDCA approach based on the developed action plan the performance of efficiency was significantly increased by 10,67% compared to the state before process improvement. The management team determined to implement further improvements relying on the methodology presented in this paper.