Investigation of Overall Effect of Production Bottlenecks on Productivity of Soft Drink Industry: A Case Study in East Africa Bottle Share Company (EABSC)

Abstract

Nowadays the struggle to survive in global market competition has become threatening. Even though the productivity of a manufacturing industry plays a significant role in enabling the industry to survive in this competition. It can be negatively impacted by the presence of bottlenecks in a production system. Therefore, the main purpose of this project work is to investigate overall effect of production bottlenecks on productivity and determine proper bottleneck identification and controlling approach for soft drink industries to improve production performance and productivity by conducting a case study in East Africa Bottling Share Company. Related works have been reviewed on related subjects like production line, production bottlenecks, line performance, line efficiency, and data analysis methods. Theory of constraint was taken as the main methodology to investigate and eliminate production bottlenecks. Line performance analysis has been done using overall equipment efficiency to understand the current operational condition of the line and then by implementing different bottleneck identification approaches the production bottleneck station has been identified. For the identified production bottleneck, root causes were investigated using the five why analysis method, as a result, focus improvement areas were identified. Then remedy action, countermeasures, and action plans have been suggested as a line improvement strategy. A line simulation model has also been developed by using Arena simulation software to evaluate the line improvement. Finally, the improved line simulation model was developed where productivity can be enhanced by 15% and production loss can be reduced by 4.7% after implementing the proposed line improvement strategy. Therefore, it has been concluded that the identification and elimination of production bottlenecks have a great positive impact on productivity improvement and loss reduction which ultimately ensures a company’s profitability.