LEAN-SIGMA deployment within a world-renowned aerospace industry

In order to face business competition, the main objective of every company is to be recognized by their customers for the quality of their products, and to meet their requirements in an optimal way in terms of time and cost. It has therefore become important to prepare well for the new pace of customers needs at the best performance while respecting the allocated budget. To meet these requirements, respecting manufacturing time has currently become one of the major problems to face. This project presents the Lean Sigma approach applied to a manufacturing workshop of a world known aerospace industry allowing the reduction of assembly times and performance improvement. To do this, we have identified the root causes generating wastes in order to set up an operating mode to better streamline the production flow, thus, balancing the workstations and reorganizing the assembly lines. We used the DMAIC approach following the steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.

We started by scoping and analyzing the product manufacturing process, then, we collected data in order to measure its current performance. We then proceeded to measure time of the different operations divided into : value-added operations, non-value-added but necessary operations and the 7 mudas (or Lean wastes). We found that the wastes represented a significant percentage in the entire process, a subject of an in-depth analysis and excellent opportunity to apply the Lean Management. Finally, we identified and analyzed the root causes of this non added value operations using several analysis tools (Ishikawa, 5 whys, causal tree, etc.).