Implementation of lean manufacturing in electronics industry

Abstract The electronics industry is one of the fastest growing industries and investments are flowing in, to increase its quality and manufacturing capacity. But, incremental challenges such as rising customer’s expectation, widening customer base of existing ones, fluctuating demand, taxation, lack of infrastructure and intense competition are pulling the sector back. Lean manufacturing could be an answer to these challenges. The concept of lean manufacturing was developed for maximizing the resource utilization through minimization of waste, later on lean was formulated in response to the fluctuating and competitive business environment. Therefore value adding process is necessary to achieve this perfection; hence implementing a lean manufacturing system is becoming a core competency for any type of organizations to sustain in the market. This paper highlights the implementation of Lean as a methodology with series of tools for continuous improvement in quality and productivity in the electronic industries. The main idea is to illustrate the electronics industries that lean implementation can increase productivity by reducing errors and quality improvement. Main optimization parameters for production line were chosen and analyzed with regard to the specifics of electronics production. One of the electronics suppliers named MASTROLEE Engineering and management consultants, Coimbatore was taken for observation and Lean implementation was considered on the engineering and management lines. Paper sums up that after implementing Lean the productivity and quality level is improved by 23% when compared to the existing system.