IMPLEMENTATION OF STANDARDIZED WORK IN LOCAL AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

This project is a study on the implementation of standardized work in local automotive industry. In today's highly competitive global automotive industry, maintaining and enhancing performance requires companies to implement leaner and more efficient systems. Thus, Lean manufacturing strategy was established which focuses on minimizing waste while simultaneously maximizing productivity within manufacturing systems. Standardized work is one of the lean manufacturing techniques which is the basis of the Lean Thinking and Kaizen philosophies. Standardized work comprises three main elements; Takt time, standard work sequence and standard work-in-progress inventory. The purpose of this study is to study the concept lean manufacturing in automotive industry and identify the implementation of lean that have been practice by the organization as well as proposing the standardized work for the organization. This research was performed by an exploratory single case study approach as well as open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interview techniques with executive industrial engineer who are familiar with the lean manufacturing implementation projects. The chosen case study company for this research is Sime Darby Auto Engineering Sdn Bhd, which is a modular internal combustion engine assembly facility located in Kulim, Kedah. The findings show that this case study company have implemented Value-Added Production System (VPS) which is a BMW production system that is align with lean manufacturing principles and philosophies. They managed to eliminate wastes such as motion and waiting time in the assembly line, that is proven as they have ramp-up 20% increased target volume based in their installed capacity. The findings also show that the case study company have implemented standardized work techniques such as Work Instruction, Root cause analysis, Floor marking standardization, and Digital Dashboards. This study also proposed the case study company an important step to give more visibility to the lean concept by addressing the problem of lack of standard procedure. Consequently, will help the shop-floor and managements to focus their efforts in achieving high performance through effective implementation of standardized work. In order to maintain the reliability of the enhanced case study area, it is strongly recommended that the organization continue to update all current best practice documentation and existing production materials, such as the Standard Work Chart (SWC), Process Flow Chart (PFC), Work Instructions (WI), Standard Work Instructions (SWC)