Lean Production in an Aerospace Parts Manufacturing Factory: A Case Study

The aerospace parts manufacturing industry is a highly precise sector, facing challenges such as a complex product mix and long production cycle times. Over the past several decades, lean manufacturing methods have been widely applied across various types of production systems. By eliminating the seven wastes and employing methods such as Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and Kanban, significant improvements have been observed in many industries.This research proposed an implementation framework for lean production and applied it to an aerospace parts manufacturer. Given the complexity of the manufacturing process and the prevalent job-shop layout in its production systems, this study designed a process-oriented production process analysis method to implement Value Stream Mapping. From the perspectives of Work-In-Process and Utilization, it iteratively identifies bottlenecks within the production process, aiming for continuous improvement in production throughput and cycle time. Finally, the principles of Factory Physics were applied to analyze production performance.