AN ANALYSIS OF THE APPLICATION OF AGILE MANUFACTURING IN MEDIUM SCALE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

Abstract

To compete effectively in the global marketplace of the twenty-first century, manufacturing companies are trying to maintain a high level of flexibility and responsiveness to achieve agility and to remain competitive. Manufacturers are under tremendous pressure to improve productivity and quality while reducing costs. The new competition is in terms of reduced cost, improved quality products with higher performance, a wider range of products and better services all delivered simultaneously to enhance value to customers. In such environment providing good quality product at low cost for a medium scale industry has become very tough. To provide good quality product at low cost, small industries need a formulation of some manufacturing approaches like agile manufacturing to manufacture defect free products within their materials cost limit. Medium scale steel manufacturing industries like Magnum steel limited (MSL), banmore are facing problems of higher rejections in form of wastes so as to increase their cost. This paper aims to analyze the application of agile manufacturing in magnum steel limited in order to reduce wastages through implementing lean tools and techniques. An agility audit questionnaire is used for assessing the agility level of the company to identify the current level of performance within the company with respect to the key elements of agility. MSL’s agile experience is reported including a list of recommendation for improving its competitiveness to offer solution alternatives not only to the current problems but also to the ones that may be encountered in the future.