Increase of Manufacturing Line Capacity using Lean Manufacturing on a Medical Device Company

Abstract

The competition between Medical Devices companies is increases every day. Many medical devices companies are marketing products that compete between each other. They challenged to obtain long term contracts to supply their product to important customer around the world. The customers are the greatest benefactor of this competition but the medical devices companies are facing challenges. To be competitive, the industry is seeking for tools to be used in order to reduce cost and improve manufacturing capacity without compromising the quality of the products. One methodology used to reduce manufacturing cost and increase process capacity is Lean Manufacturing. This methodology is used to reduce sources of muda or in other words, waste. Muda can be associated to downtime, waiting time, unnecessary movements among others things that do not create value to the customer. This article discusses the improvement of the manufacturing line capacity of a Medical Device Company. The methodology used for the improvement was Lean Manufacturing using the DMAIC tool as a systematic approach. Key Terms - Capacity, DMAIC, Lean Manufacturing, Process Flow.