Lean Warehouse Management through Value Stream Mapping: A Case Study of Sugar Manufacturing Company in Thailand

Abstract

The price war is commercial competition characterized by the repeated cutting of prices below those of competitors. The sugar industry is the country's most important business in Thailand that is facing a price wars competition in the global market. Sugar manufacturers have to eliminate and reduce the cost that occurs from non-value-added activities from processes to compete with the producer from other countries. Then, lean manufacturing (LM) is used to be a systematic approach for the identification and elimination of wastes (non-value-added activities) from processes. It can apply to all types of business organizations to enhance productivity and minimize cost. This study aims to apply lean manufacturing for analyzing, improving and eliminating unnecessary activities through value stream mapping (VSM) in warehouse management of sugar manufacturing company in Thailand. All activities are broken down into smaller activities to can be analyzed via workload analysis. ECRS principle is used to make up new activities after identifying the waste and the optimal workflows. The results illustrated that one operation process was removed, the number of workers was decreased by 3 persons, the cycle time of warehouse management decreased by 36% and the total workload of workers decreased by 48%. © 2021 IEEE.