Implementation of lean within the cement industry.

Implementation of lean helps many organizations to improve their productivity and efficiency; on the other hand numerous organizations have failed to benefit from lean philosophy. The lean thinking was originated in the automobile manufacturing sector and it widely spreads within the discrete industries; however the today’s challenge is to implement the lean philosophy within continuous manufacturing industries and different organizations regardless to the type, size, or mission of the applicant organization. This has motivated the undertaken research to propose a standard generic transition steps which can be adopted by different organizations in order to become lean. The cement industry is ideal example of the continuous industry sector and it will be used to demonstrate that the lean philosophy is applicable to all deferent organisation types. There are numerous challenges facing the cement industry in today’s competitive environments; one of the major challenges is the capability of the cement industry to adopt and introduce the improvement approaches and techniques by which the overall enhancement can be achieved. The need for improving the efficiency of the cement production line is widely acknowledged in order to reduce the downtime rates, and satisfy high levels of market demand where the demand for cement is mostly second substance behind water. In response to this respect this thesis has investigated and addressed the implementation of the lean philosophy within the cement industry. The main contribution of this study is to convey the message to the decision makers that the lean philosophy is the proposed solution by which the continuous industry and different organisation types can be improved through eliminating or minimising wastes and non-value added activities within the production line

The moderating effects of leadership roles between total productive maintenance (TPM) practices and organisation performance in power generation industry

The importance of the energy industry motivated this research to be conducted, specifically to explore the Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) implementation in the power generation industry. TPM, as a part of management tools, has the proven capacity to improve the business performance of production in organizations. TNB Janamanjung Sdn Bhd (TNBJ) owned by Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) has progressively implemented TPM since 2010. Therefore, there is a need for a research to be conducted to determine the relationship between TPM practices and the organization’s performance. Organization performance, in this research context, refers to the performance in TPM, namely equipment effectiveness, efficiency and reliability. These three measures are considered highly significant to the key performance indicators. Hence, the primary aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between TPM practices and organization performance. TPM encompasses the maintenance practice, continuous improvement, resource management and training; meanwhile, organization performance includes equipment effectiveness, autonomous maintenance and planned maintenance. This research also examined the moderating effects of leadership between the TPM practices and organization performance. The research applied the quantitative approach where the survey which was conducted received a 76 percent response rate. The results showed a significant relationship between TPM practices and organization performance and found leadership roles only moderated between the relationship of TPM practices and the maintenance activities in organization performance. In sum, the findings support the TPM pillars model which can be the basis for TPM implementation in other industries. Besides, the findings also provide opportunities for future research to venture into different TPM practices and the effects to the organization performance

Synergies of Three Letters Syndrome for Revitalizing Manufacturing

(TOC) generally investigate the implementation and impact of these programs in isolation. However, many researchers believe and argue conceptually the value of understanding the joint implementation and effect of manufacturing programs. This paper investigates the relationship among these three letters paradigm and describes a synergistic relationship among JIT, TOC, TPM, TQM, and SCM. The survey results of 45 Indian manufacturing industries underlines the need of joint implementation for revitalizing manufacturing. The theoretical argument leads to conclusion that the organization which have implemented jointly will outperform the organizations that have implemented only one or none