Investigation of the Effect of Production Losses and Their Root Causes on Productivity Improvement Case Study in National Tobacco Enterprise (Ethiopia)S.C

Abstract

Productivity is the quantitative relationship between what is produced and what has been spent to produce. Investigating the loses of product with root causes and remedies were analyzed. The main objective of this thesis was to analyze the root causes of production losses to enhance productivity in Tobacco factory. Various losses occurring in a manufacturing plant reduced productivity while increased costs. Minimization of cigarette rejection was one of the most important factors for an organization to Productivity improvement. Root-cause identification for machine breakdown, quality and productivity related problems were key issues for manufacturing processes. This research has been carried out in a of national tobacco enterprise (Ethiopia) S.C industry. Data would be collected; by data analysis structured interview questions, visiting recorded data in company, by visiting concerned machines in industry and recording existing rejection rate per month. Initially in this study pie chart and Pareto analysis were used to figure out the major contributors for losses due to machine breakdown. RCA using the CED and 5Why techniques were done so as to explain the reasons behind major machine breakdown. Statistical analysis tools were carried out in SPSS version 26 and SPC are used in the process to identify the existing wastes of the selected machines and to reduce them. According to the company's plan, the annual percentage plan was 4.09% and the loss by mid-2022 year was 6.66%. this when it converted to money 108,643,625.20 birr were a production loss. It was found that the rood break and incomplete cigarette pocket were the major root causes for this rejection. The factory’s production and improvement related documents of different month and final annual reports were referred and analyzed. The outcome of this thesis was to reduce or eliminate rejection in cigarette manufacturing operation and obtain better product quality. The various methods have been discussed in detail with their outcomes on the productivity of organizations.