The car industry in the Philippines has been booming for the last five years. The country ranked ninth in the largest number of registered passenger cars across the Asia-Pacific region, and in 2019 sold around 273.4 thousand vehicles. Relative to this, local customers pay an average of 1.0 to 1.3 million Philippine pesos for a motor car.  The company in the study is an automobile assembly plant, responsible for sales and distribution of automobiles and parts locally, and in other ASEAN countries. This research was conducted to find out, what affects the cycle time of returnable packaging logistics materials. The study employed primary and secondary data. Primary data were obtained through the deployment of the survey questionnaire, which was based on the Cycle-Time Improvement Guidebook – Partnering for Total Quality by Kanagal (1992); secondary data were provided by the company information system.  Respondents of the survey were one hundred and sixty-one (161) team members, from manager to interns, who were actively working at the time of the study at the Returnable Packaging Logistics Operation. Percentage and weighted mean were used to compute data.  Findings showed that the team members need periodic education through training and skills upgrade to align to Industry 4.0 concepts while providing process improvement activities to improve the operation’s cycle time. Furthermore, the current information system of the organization needs to be upgraded with technology, that can provide a proactive approach to the operation.

Keywords

Returnable Packaging, Cycle Time, Predictive Data Analytics, Information Technology, Industry 4.0.