Retrofit of two way holding chuck to improve process efficiency and resource management

In today’s industrial scenarios, having continuous improvement to increase the process efficiency is one of the key measures. Especially manufacturing and automotive industries are putting forth a lot of resource and time to improve the efficiency of the process without compromising the current production capacity and improve the quality rate. This paper deals with a case study of retrofitting a two-way chuck in a vertical lathe machine and thereby calculating the overall equipment effectiveness of the entire automated process in piston manufacturing. The current automated production line of piston manufacturing is being analysed with the help of value stream mapping (VSM). Value stream mapping is widely used by the industrial persons to identify the wastes i.e., non-value-added time in the process line. The Critical to Quality (CTQ) parameters in an efficient production line such as lead time, value added time, transfer time and takt time have taken into account for identifying the places of improvement. A new retrofitted design has been suggested which can increase the production efficiency of the current system with effective utilization of available resources. After implementing the modified retrofit design, the subsequent changes in the process line have also been stated through Future state VSM, which clearly indicates the reduction in drop to drop time between the cells which has been considered as the non value added time in the current system. Studies like these shows that effective utilisation of available resources through retrofitting can greatly assist the manufacturers to reduce their cost of additional investment and be sustainable among the growing competitors in the market.