CYCLE TIME IMPROVEMENT IN WIRING HARNESS ASSEMBLY PROCESS

Abstract

Nowadays Automotive Wiring harness industry has encountered problems of low production rate, higher labor cost and shortage of labors which has caused many companies to turn their interest on how to reduce the cost in order to sustain their profit margins. Therefore, this research study has been developed with the objective to study on improvement of wiring harness’s production process. The current survey and observational analysis on the case study company shows that the production capability of wiring harness to OEM client have an average of 55 pieces per day or 7 pieces per hour during normal working-time, which accounts for a working period of eight hours. However, the demand of customers is at 70 pieces per day. This demonstrates a gap between the ability of the case study company to supply the required demand. The method of work study and lean tools will be used for analyzing the problems and general solutions. There are two main solutions that had been selected to be implemented, which are the use of Trolley for transferring parts and the use of Transferring board (Tofix board ) for transferring smaller parts. In the pilot test that took place between May 2015 and June 2015, several interesting findings were determined, all pointing towards positive results. The results demonstrated that there was a significant reduction in the overall cycle time from 504 seconds per round to 405 seconds per round or 19.6% reduced. From two month experiment in May and June 2015, the output has increased from an average of 1,454 units per month to an average of 1,836 units per month whereas hour rate output has increased from 7 units per hour to 8.83 units per hour which give the daily production output to increase from 55 units to 70 units per day with in normal working time of eight hours. All of these implementation has no concern on other subjects except the methods and equipment added to the production process.