Lean manufacturing process for a biomedical product Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • The scope of lean manufacturing (LM) is ever increasing- first implemented in automotive, then in other traditional manufacturing and now almost in any industry beyond manufacturing. While the lean literature is very rich in terms of its application in high volume and commoditized products in traditional manufacturing industries, there are not as many examples representing an industry setting that produces innovative and custom designed parts. In fact, low volume products provide greater opportunities for savings than their high volume counterparts through an innovative and efficient production processes. The orthopedic industry case study this paper presents falls under such category. In addition, biomedical products pose unique challenges to the process optimization efforts because of their stringent government and industry requirements. This paper presents a lean process for bone screw manufacturing at a major North American orthopedic industry. Value stream mapping (VSM) and statistical quality control techniques have been applied to drive the non-value added operations out of the bone screw manufacturing process. The results are validated through laboratory tests as per industry standards. The new lean process has been further validated via hypothesis testing to satisfy the biomechanical requirements of the newly manufactured bone screws.

published proceedings

  • IIE Annual Conference and Expo 2010 Proceedings

author list (cited authors)

  • Nepal, B., & Balla, K.

complete list of authors

  • Nepal, B||Balla, K

publication date

  • January 2010