Improving Productivity Using Six Sigma Methodologies: A Case Study on a Fluorescent Glass Tube Production Line

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Mechanical Engineering Department, National Research Centre

2 Canadian International Collage (CIC)

Abstract

The objective of this study is to decrease the number of defects occurring through manufacturing process of the fluorescent glass tube using six sigma techniques performing cost analysis for the case under study; before and after improvement i.e. reduction of the number of defects. The case under study is applied on glass tube production line in one of Toshiba El-Araby Industrial factories. It was observed that there are a number of defect that was monitored through the study period of 9 months. These defects include variation in the outer diameter of the tube, the texture of the batch mix and some other defects.
The fluorescent glass tube factory consists of four main areas: utility, batch, melting and production area. The scope of the study is targeting the muffle area in which different types of defects occur during the process. These defects include; variation in the outer diameter of the tube, knots, stones, etc.
Advanced six-sigma tool (DMAIC) is applied on a case study to reduce process variation by capability index improvement and determine reduced cost of outside diameter defect per million through using Part-Per-Million (PPM) Calculations. The reduction of outside diameter variation reached 50%

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