Manufacturing excellence in the Indian automobile industry through sustainable lean manufacturing: a case study

Sustainable lean manufacturing (SLM) in automobile industry is an important pillar of survival in this competitive world. SLM has focused on profit of an organisation by ensuring sustained good quality products and meeting customer demands. In a competitive era, the present study focuses on developing a practical implementation of SLM and explains its practical implementation through descriptive models drawn by the researchers. This study focuses on implementation of lean manufacturing in the automotive industry in the assembly, machining and moulding shops. It special deals with all kinds of waste (overproduction, inventory, waiting, rework and rejection) in the industry. After analysing the waste level, it focuses on factors important to implementing lean manufacturing and provides a draft list of factors in the areas where the industry is found to have some gaps. With the help of an earlier research model, the lean implementation Gantt chart is made following the researcher's guidelines. After lean implementation, waste in industry is reduced as per the target setting; and the focus now shifts to sustainability of the implemented action. The changes added for sustainability of the system constitute guidelines so that if there is any change in organisation actions, sustainability is still ensured.