Process improvement for the manufacture of excavator bucket for a construction equipment manufacturer

Abstract

A construction equipment manufacturer procured the SK220 excavator machine from Japan without the bucket. Given the poor quality of outsourced buckets, the company considered manufacturing its own strong and reliable excavator buckets. However, due to Covid 19 pandemic, the company failed to deliver the buckets on time, which affected committed customer orders. The aim of the paper is to pinpoint the bottlenecks within the supply chain and institute some corrective and preventive actions to improve the manufacture of excavator bucket for the construction equipment manufacturer. Capacity planning was conducted to establish the weekly production capacity for the excavator bucket, considering the number of workers and equipment. Root cause analysis was conducted to pinpoint all the waste that characterised the supply chain and significant counter-measures were implemented. The results demonstrated significant productivity improvement, waste reduction and average in monthly sales amounting to R6 250 000.