Operations Improvement for Al-Andalus Factory
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Date
2019-12
Authors
Jibrel, Abbas
Risha, Karim
Khalil, Manar
Kayed, Tala
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Abstract
Al-Andalus factory for nylon industry is located in the Eastern side of Nablus, the factory was established in 1992. They started with manufacturing shoes but in 1997 they switched to producing plastic bags in different sizes and shapes according to customers’ desires. It is a small family business with 16 employees including the manager, the factory is divided into six departments which are: administrative office, production, scrap and recycling, spare parts room and warehouse.
The factory was chosen due to the importance of small-scale industries in Palestine. It was noticed that the factory suffers from several problems such as improper layout, there is no type of organizational structures in the factory, they do not use any scientific methods to organize their production operations, they work randomly, there is no work plan, there is a high volume of backlog orders because of bad time management system, there is a high scrap ratio, a poor inventory management, they do not have a barcode system they do not have a complete tracking system for raw material inventory and accessories quantities.
The information and data needed to assess the current situation of the factory was collected using an excel sheet (toolkit), visual assessment and descriptive analysis. Based on that, a new layout was designed to save space, reduce distance travelled and taking into consideration safety exits, a maintenance system was built to increase the reliability, availability and reduces down time of the machines, standard operating procedures (SOPs) for maintenance and warehouse systems were created and a clear organizational structure was established that connect the whole company together and thus increase the performance of the factory as a whole.