Lean manufacturing implementation in management of residues from automotive industry-case study

Lean manufacturing is a system that improves the processes in an organization by using principles and tools to reduce several types of waste. This system has been applied to a wide number of areas and activities in different companies. Having said that, still there are certain companies operating in the recycling industry, which do not consider waste processes as a problem. It is here where a controversy is born: when a recycling company treating waste from other industries has "waste" in its processes. Lean manufacturing techniques tackle this problem by diminishing or eliminating the waste. This is the case presented herein, the Ecuadorian company AV. CORP., which experienced an improvement in its activities to treat waste materials coming from an automotive industry due to the application of lean manufacturing tools. All has been done by following the DMAIC methodology. Many benefits were obtained, such as the reduction in the occupied space in the plant, the reduction in movements of workers and others, the learning of lean culture in different levels of the enterprise and the general picture of the plant. An improvement of seventeen percent was achieved in terms of space, and it was experimented a reduction of a fifty percent in terms of variability in regard to time of disassembly of wooden pallets.