Implementation of Karakuri Kaizen to improve productivity and ergonomics in wire rope industry

Wire rope manufacturing industry in Malaysia is thriving and demands are rising for the products. Productive workers are needed to fulfill the work orders however, the existing work stations designs have detrimental effects on workers' health. This is because the productivity level is always linked to the wellbeing of the workers. In response, Karakuri Kaizen concept implementations has been selected to improve the current workstation designs. The relationship between Karakuri Kaizen with productivity and ergonomics during the concept implementations is studied. A case study on the proposed concept had been performed in a wire rope manufacturing factory by means of questionnaire and experiments concerning both previous and improved workstation designs. Validation of the results are done by using productivity reports throughout the year, REBA analysis and Paired Samples t-test. Reba analysis shows significant improvement from REBA Level 3 and 4 on previous designs to Level 2 after concept implementation. Productivity increases around 5.8% throughout the study. Compelling differences between two samples have also been recognized through Paired Samples t-test. Therefore, the implementation of Karakuri Kaizen concept on the workstation designs has positive impacts on both productivity and ergonomics in wire rope manufacturing industry dictated by the results of this study.