Process Improvement of Pakistan's manufactured Truck and Trailer Wheel Hubs using DMAIC methodology

Abstract

Process improvement or continuous improvement is a practice used by various industries in the World in order to get high productivity and huge profits, to reduce rejection rates, manufacturing cost and rework, to improve quality of products and processes, to develop competitive culture among employees and the most importantly to develop customer satisfaction. For the process improvement, a large number of conventional and advanced methodologies and techniques are used in which “Six Sigma” is on top and the need of time. Six sigma methodologies are a set of quality tools and techniques which are used by many renowned industries in order to improve their manufacturing processes. This methodology is not only used in the manufacturing processes but also used in services sector and other sectors as well. For this purpose several process improvement approaches are used under the umbrella of six sigma methodologies among which DMAIC is the mostly used approach. DMAIC is largely used along with MINITAB® software by many Six Sigma professionals. The objective of this research is to implement DMAIC approach in Pakistan’s leading automotive parts manufacturing industry in order to reduce the internal rejection rate, to improve sigma level, to increase productivity and also to improve quality of its specialized products “Truck and Trailer” wheel hubs. This approach is used with real statistical data of the wheel hub to reduce internal rejection rate from 4.37% to 0.65%, to improve sigma level from 3.21 to 3.98, and to provide cost savings up to PKR 10 Million. After implementing the DMAIC approach, several problems of the process in studied are solved, improved, documented and standardized. DMAIC approach also builds competitive culture among employees and it also leads to customer satisfaction which is the most important factor for the organizations.