Lean Manufacturing tools applied to the

metalworking industry in Perú

Miguel Arbieto José Vásquez Ernesto Altamirano
Faculty of Industrial Faculty of Industrial Faculty of Industrial
Engineering Engineering Engineering
Universidad Peruana de Universidad Peruana de Universidad Peruana de
Ciencias Aplicadas Ciencias Aplicadas Ciencias Aplicadas
Lima, Perú Lima, Perú Lima, Perú
u201518451@upc.edu.pe u201518333@upc.edu.pe pcinealt@upc.edu.pe

José Álvarez Eloy Marcelo

Faculty of Industrial Faculty of Industrial
Engineering Engineering
Universidad Peruana de Universidad Peruana de
Ciencias Aplicadas Ciencias Aplicadas
Lima, Perú Lima, Perú
pciijalv@upc.edu.pe pcinemar@upc.edu.pe

Abstract— Small and medium-sized enterprises often rely Manufacturing can also improve customer
heavily on their production process to position themselves in responsiveness and the quality of the products. On-time
the market. However, there are few situations where deliveries are one of the most important indicators in
companies have the knowledge and financial resources to the manufacturing sector. This indicator can highly
improve their operational performance. This study proposes impact on the sales and overall market presence of the
the use of the tools of the Lean Manufacturing philosophy to company. The application of Lean Manufacturing is
reduce most activities that do not add value within the
production process. First, the diagnosis of the current
critical to achieve a higher level of this indicator by
situation of the company under study was carried out, as eliminating waste that could obstruct the expected
well as the determination of the impact caused by the customer response [9].
problems encountered. Secondly, the design of the solution
proposal was proposed using 5S, SMED and SLP to mitigate 5S is a Lean tool that acts as the root for achieving total
the causes of the previously diagnosed problems. Finally, in quality management in manufacturing organizations, as
the simulation, the production system and the changes well as a basis for worker awareness of the Lean
proposed obtained a reduction in the lead time, due to the philosophy. It builds the environment of continuous
reduction of the unproductive times identified, of 6.79%.
improvement by eliminating inefficiencies and waste,
thus improving the motivation and alignment of
Keywords — Lean Manufacturing, 5S, SMED, SLP and
metalworking.
employees [10]. The SLP (Systematic Layout Planning)
tool seeks to identify the best alternative among several
design proposals, taking into account the design that
best suits the operational procedures and strategies of
I. INTRODUCTION
the production plant [5]. It is based on the logical
Regarding the growth of the Peruvian manufacturing
relationship between the work area and the production
sector, 2017 shows us one of the most important figures
process. SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die)
for this sector, since the Ministry of Production
methodology seeks to convert configuration activities or
mentions that it had an increase of 5% compared to
setup time from internal to external. External activities
previous years [7]. One of the sectors with the greatest
are those that can be performed during normal operation
influence in the manufacturing industry is the
of the machine. Internal activities can only be
metalworking sector, as its production has been
performed when the machine is turned off, for example,
increasing significantly in recent years. Peru's
by placing or removing dies [2].
metalworking sector experienced a production growth
of 10.2% between January and October last year [13].
This paper evaluates the situation in a production
environment of a metalworking plant, which presents a
Due to this fact, it is necessary to adapt the production
high number of late deliveries. In this regard, a study is
environment to a continuous improvement philosophy.
carried out to identify the causes. Later, a simulation is
Regarding it, Lean Manufacturing is a continuous
performed and the results are discussed while the study
improvement tool that is defined as the manufacturing
is evaluated in economic terms.
of goods and services with minimal inventory, as well
as the reduction of waste with human effort, inventory
levels, lead time, and production time, to be highly
competent in the face of customer demands [3][5]. Lean

978-1-7281-9466-0/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE

Authorized licensed use limited to: Univ of Calif Santa Barbara. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 16:09:49 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 II. PROBLEM ANALYSIS
The study focuses on a metalworking company in the
Industrial Park of Villa El Salvador, which produces
chairs, folders, tables, among other products with metal
structure. The company has maintained its production
process for years, with slight changes, implying
obsolescence in this process and, therefore, the
degradation of its productive performance. In recent
years the company has submitted declining sales, as
well as a high number of late deliveries. According to
research [9], a high percentage of back deliveries can
lead to problems such as customer dissatisfaction and
conflicts with the company's money flow. This
percentage is measured based on the times when the Figure 1 Ishikawa diagram
delivery date was greater than the promised delivery
date, relative to the total deliveries in a given period. The impact of the causes on the company's lead time is
determined, which is greater than the dates of the agreed
deliveries. A Pareto diagram is made to observe the
importance of the causes:

Figure Percentage of orders with late delivery (2018)
and sales per month ($)
As can be seen in the graph, the percentages of late
deliveries vary between 30% and 39% for each month,
obtaining an average percentage of late deliveries of
34%.
In 2018, the penalties reached a total of $15,822. It
should be noted that the delay in most cases did not
exceed the duration of 2 days. For this reason, reducing
the lead time in such a number of days would mean
drastic reduction in penalties.
Figure 2 Importance of each cause associated with the
problem
It can be seen that the causes of transportation delay
between production areas, inefficient setup time and
delay in searching for materials make up about 80% of
the total time invested per month. It is for this reason
that the solution tools will be proposed around these
causes.

An Ishikawa diagram classifies the different causes of

the poor percentage of orders delivered on time based
on 5 criteria: environment, method, labor, material and
machinery:

Authorized licensed use limited to: Univ of Calif Santa Barbara. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 16:09:49 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 III. INNOVATIVE PROPOSAL
The design of the proposal is born from the combination
of the following articles:

The first is titled "Implementation of Lean Tools in an

Automotive Industry for Productivity Enhancement - A
Case Study" [8], showing a 5S implementation model,
which has as a first step the collection of information to
later develop an initial VSM. Then the 5S is applied and
finally a future VSM is performed to diagnose what has
happened with the company after deploying the 5S.

The second article [1] entitled "Combining lean tools

application in kaizen: a field study on the printing
industry", this article shows an SLP model in which it
has is divided into 4 phases: localization, general
distribution plan, detailed distribution plan and
installation. Finally, the last article entitled "SMED for
quick change over in manufacturing industry – a case
study" [12], the proposed model starts with the
collection of information and then performs an initial
VSM, then the SMED is applied and finally a future
VSM is made for comparison of the initial VSM.

a. 5S
A diagnosis was made in terms of 5S, which allowed to
identify the current level of the company in this regard.
The combined score of the 5S level in the plant is 20
points, out of a total of 100 points, indicating a
deficiency at the current level of the 5S. Figure 3 Proposed layout design

In order to develop each stage of 5S was necessary to
adopt tools such as red cards, visual guides like
Frequency of Use Circle (which suggests the location of
these items according to their frequency of use). Also,
in regards of cleaning the plant, it was divided into 4
areas according to the operational processes and
machines contained in each.
Finally, audits are carried out in which the same
diagnostic tools are used and are scheduled, so the
change and impact caused by the implementation could
be perceived.
b. Systematic Layout Planning (SLP)
First, an analysis of factors that influence the
distribution of the plant was carried out, such as: the
material factor, machinery, transportation, waiting,
service, building or infrastructure. Based on those
factors, a relational table of activities was carried out to
identify which processes should be contiguous with
each other and which should be separated. A Thread
Diagram was also used to represent the trajectory of the
workers.
c. Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED)
First, the execution of the tool requires the creation of a
work team, which is made up of the plant staff and the
main authors of this article.
Secondly, the sequence of the company’s eight
production processes is analyzed to determine the waste
and opportunities for improvement in each of them.
Thirdly, internal and external activities are classified, to
later convert the largest number of internal activities to
external, in order to carry out the greatest number of
activities that could be done while the machine is
operating.
At this point, a Process Flow Diagram (PFD) was made
after having changed the internal activities into external.
In this way, the significant reduction in installation time
was evident, which went from 45 minutes to 12.67
minutes, per day.

Based the tools previously described, the final layout of

the plant distribution proposal was prepared. Obtaining
as a result the figure 2, it implicates a reduction in the
total distance traveled by 54.29 meters and 4 transports.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Univ of Calif Santa Barbara. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 16:09:49 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 IV. VALIDATION The corresponding changes were made to each of the
The simulation was performed in Arena, checking the workstations. Reducing their standard times of each in
initial data before the improvements. estimated percentages, according to the state of the art
revised. Once this change was made, the system was
For this point, the first thing did was performing the simulated for one month and a production of 1620
appropriate treatment on the data (time taken) collected chairs was obtained (being chairs the company’s more
over 4 months. For this, the Arena´s Input Analyzer was sold product and thus the “guide product”). Compared
used to determine the corresponding distribution of the to the current simulation of the system, production was
time taking of each process. It should be noted that each increased in 4 chairs daily. Also, the lead time was
sample satisfactorily completed the Chi-square and reduced by 6.79%, which implies a reduction of the
Kolgomorov tests, giving a p-value higher than 0.05 in processing days of an order between 1 and 2 days,
both tests. In this way, it was possible to obtain the depending on the size of the order.
statistic distribution of each process in the below table,
to subsequently perform the representation of the
system and the simulation model. V. DISCUSSION
Below is shown the cost associated to unproductive
TABLE 1 STATISTIC DISTRIBUTION OF EACH time, the applied reduction and the cost achieved:
PRODUCTION PROCESS
TABLE 2 COST REDUCTION
Process Representation Distribution
Orders TELL1 NORM(4.98, 0.5) Cost (after)
Cost (before) Reduction
Cutting TS1 NORM(7.27, 1.04) Unproductive
$33,561.17 23% $25,806.46
Folding TS2 NORM(10.9, 1.14) time
Welding TS3 NORM(22.9, 1.2)
A considerable reduction in the total cost of causes can
Grinding TS4 NORM(3.5, 0.499) be seen, reducing by 23%. With regard to the penalties
Washing TS5 NORM(16.6, 1.31) received for late deliveries, by reducing the cycle time
by 6.79% this would mean that all orders are fulfilled,
Drying TS6 NORM(32.5, 1.21)
since the delayed days were in all cases 1 or 2 days.
Painting TS7 NORM(5.39, 0.514) This would mean that penalty expenses can be now
Baking TS8 CONSTANT(30) considered as a new income.

Economic viability is assessed using indicators such as

The Arena simulation of the current situation of the NPV (Net Present Value), IRR (Internal Rate of Return)
company was performed, obtaining a percentage error and Benefit-Cost Ratio. The indicator values are shown
of 0.85% in the monthly production with respect to the in the following table:
reality of the study company. Therefore the sampling
carried out is valid since the error is less than the TABLE 3 ECONOMIC VALIDATION INDICATORS
accepted, 5%. The proposed model simulation is shown
below:
Value in the Evaluation
Indicator
case study criterion

NPV $6,059.93 Greater than $0

Higher to COK
IRR 66%
(14.04%)

B-C Ratio 1.96 Greater than 1

Noting that the indicators show a higher value than the

individual condition of each indicator to be considered
positive, it is shown that the project is economically
Figure 4 Simulation model viable.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Univ of Calif Santa Barbara. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 16:09:49 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 VI. CONCLUSIONS
The state of the art presents details the success stories
raised in similar items industries in different parts of the
world, through tools of Lean Manufacturing, which was
necessary to know the scope and validity of such tools.
By testing it was shown that the lead time decreases by
6.79%%, thanks to the combined reduction of 21.82%
in downtime. This means that delivery days could be
reduced by this percentage, and because of this, they
will be able to meet the delivery of orders on time.
Also, in the economic evaluation of the project in which
3 indicators were used to determine the validity of the
project, positive results were found for each indicator,
suggesting that the project is economically viable.
With the results obtained, it is hoped to turn this study
into a transcendental source for future inspiration and
consultation from other companies in the metalworking
industry, since this sector is a fundamental part of the
country's economy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper is entirely supported by Universidad
Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. The authors would like
to thank all of the participants who have a role in
conducting this study especially the metalworking plant
as an object of this study.
REFERENCES
[1]. Chan, C.O. and Tay, H.L. (2018), "Combining lean
tools application in kaizen: a field study on the printing
industry", International Journal of Productivity and
Performance Management, Vol. 67 No. 1, pp. 45-65.
[2]. Ekincioğlu, C., & Boran, S. (2018). SMED
methodology based on fuzzy Taguchi method. Journal
of Enterprise Information Management, 31(6), 867–878.
[3]. Febriandini, I. F., & Yuniaristanto, (2019). Re-
design Facility Layout using Systematic Layout
Planning Method: A Case Study: Biopro Cosmeceutical
Sdn. Bhd.. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science
and Engineering, 495, 012027.
[4]. Godinho Filho, M., Ganga, G. M. D., &
Gunasekaran, A. (2016). Lean manufacturing in
Brazilian small and medium enterprises:
implementation and effect on performance.
International Journal of Production Research, 54(24),
7523–7545.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Univ of Calif Santa Barbara. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 16:09:49 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
[5]. Leme, R. D., Nunes, A. O., Message Costa, L. B.,
& Silva, D. A. L. (2018). Creating value with less
impact: Lean, green and eco-efficiency in a
metalworking industry towards a cleaner production.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 196, 517–534.
[6]. Mina, H., Hosseini, S. E., Salehian, F., & Pakzad
Moghaddam, S. H. (2018). A hierarchical cellular
manufacturing system. International Journal of
Mathematics in Operational Research, 13(1), 47
[7]. Ministerio de producción. (2017, January). Reporte
de producción manufacturera. Recovered on October
26th
[8]. Nallusamy, Dr & M.A., Adil. (2017).
Implementation of Lean Tools in an Automotive
Industry for Productivity Enhancement - A Case Study.
International Journal of Engineering Research in Africa.
29, pp 175-185
[9]. Ramachandran & Neelakrishnan (2017). An
approach to improving customer on-time delivery
against the original promise date. South African Journal
of Industrial Engineering December 2017 Vol 28(4), pp
109-119
[10]. Randhawa, J. S., & Ahuja, I. S. (2018). An
investigation into manufacturing performance
achievements accrued by Indian manufacturing
organization through strategic 5S practices.
International Journal of Productivity and Performance
Management, 67(4), 754–787.
[11] Rizkya1, I., Syahputri1, K., Sari1, R & Siregar1, I
(2019). 5S Implementation in Welding Workshop – a
Lean Tool in Waste Minimization. IOP Conference
Series: Materials Science and Engineering, Vol 505
[12]. Singh, J., Singh, H. and Singh, I. (2018), "SMED
for quick changeover in manufacturing industry – a case
study", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol.
25 No. 7, pp. 2065-2088
[13]. SNI. (2019, May 9th). SNI: Industria
metalmecánica creció 10,2% - Sociedad Nacional de
Industrias. Recovered on October 27th, 2019