Track: Graduate Student Paper Competition

Abstract

Production engineering is facing challenges as a result of stiff competition in today’s market because manufacturers are under pressure to respond to customer demands and quality. These conditions put an insurmountable pressure on the production process and productivity improvement becomes the required leverage for an organization. When conventional productivity improvement tools and techniques do not yield the required results, engineering has to resort to measures that can alleviate the circumstance by introducing productivity support auxiliary equipment.  Achieving responsiveness in productivity improvement is an ever-challenging task in the production industry. The scope for productivity improvement always exists and therefore there are alternative ways and means to achieve further productivity improvement, such as the application of auxiliary equipment in productivity improvement initiatives. Preliminary qualitative research supports the use of auxiliary production support equipment such as fixtures, jigs and spindles to increase the responsiveness of production to productivity improvement requirements.  This paper presents a comprehensive example that illustrates the application of auxiliary production support equipment in productivity improvement initiatives.  A comparison of results achieved with and without the application of auxiliary equipment is used as supporting evidence that auxiliary equipment has a huge impact on productivity improvement when applied in the production industry.   

Key words: Productivity; Auxiliary; improvement; Production; Support.