Abstract
Manufacturing firms around the world are constantly faced with the challenge to stay competitive in the evolving global market. Majority of manufacturing plants are faced with low production efficiency and productivity challenges. These challenges have triggered the necessity for manufacturing organization to constantly be on the lookout for improvement strategies. Over the past 10 years, there has been a decline in the South African manufacturing industry in terms of the industry’s contribution towards Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This decline may be attributed to different factors such as slow economic growth and lack of investment. However production inefficiency and low productivity are among the contributing factors. This research intends to investigate effective methods to improve production efficiency in the manufacturing industry by examining the efficiency of the production line using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Literature on World Class Manufacturing (WCM) improvement strategies and its applications is reviewed. This study follows a quantitative research approach using secondary data provided by company X. This research uses a case study of a steel manufacturing company X located in Newcastle, Kwa-Zulu Natal to investigate the performance of a production line based on Availability, Performance and Quality described by Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) as prominent Key Performance Indicators (KPI). In addition, the study analyses production stoppages to calculate the three factors of OEE and identifies productivity initiatives that would lead to an overall increase in production line efficiency...
M.Ing. (Engineering Management)