Lean Manufacturing Processes: Improving Overall Equipment Effectiveness at a Manufacturing Plant

Abstract

This Data Challenge on lean manufacturing processes highlights Opobo, a manufacturing and marketing organisation that has yet to implement a lean process but needs a lean culture hinged on continuous improvement and respect for people. This lean process Data Challenge is suitable for the operations management course of a first-year MBA, final-year undergraduate, and operational excellence–focused programmes. This Data Challenge would be most suitable during the mid-sessions of an operations management course, because it would be helpful for students to understand the concept of lean process as an improvement-driven initiative prior to completing the Challenge.

The management team of Opobo has always prided itself on the culture of efficiency and operational excellence that has pervaded the organisation over the years. A critical essence of Opobo’s organisational culture is hinged on leveraging operations as a competitive advantage, but this has become a mirage due to the undetermined long throughput time vis-à-vis customers’ demands for its products, incidents of unplanned high inventory levels of raw materials, poor capacity utilisation due to stockouts of critical raw materials, and unyielding customers’ complaints resulting from poor quality issues. Aside from these, Opobo’s plant has experienced incidents of low Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) across its entire plant for more than 5 years of its operations, in addition to witnessing a high attrition rate of some of its experienced employees. Despite these operational challenges, Opobo’s management is unwilling to improve its operational efficiency by embarking on a lean implementation that would translate into high values of OEE as a function of improved throughput of its entire operations. As the head of the plant’s leadership team, John is at a crossroads regarding how to convince his management team to embark on a lean transformation journey.

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