Implementation of lean within the cement industry.
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Abstract
Implementation of lean helps many organizations to improve their productivity and efficiency; on the other hand numerous organizations have failed to benefit from lean philosophy. The lean thinking was originated in the automobile manufacturing sector and it widely spreads within the discrete industries; however the today’s challenge is to implement the lean philosophy within continuous manufacturing industries and different organizations regardless to the type, size, or mission of the applicant organization. This has motivated the undertaken research to propose a standard generic transition steps which can be adopted by different organizations in order to become lean. The cement industry is ideal example of the continuous industry sector and it will be used to demonstrate that the lean philosophy is applicable to all deferent organisation types. There are numerous challenges facing the cement industry in today’s competitive environments; one of the major challenges is the capability of the cement industry to adopt and introduce the improvement approaches and techniques by which the overall enhancement can be achieved. The need for improving the efficiency of the cement production line is widely acknowledged in order to reduce the downtime rates, and satisfy high levels of market demand where the demand for cement is mostly second substance behind water. In response to this respect this thesis has investigated and addressed the implementation of the lean philosophy within the cement industry. The main contribution of this study is to convey the message to the decision makers that the lean philosophy is the proposed solution by which the continuous industry and different organisation types can be improved through eliminating or minimising wastes and non-value added activities within the production line.