Applying a People-Centric Reliability Method to Boost Productivity and Employee Well-being: A Case Study in the Marine Canvas Industry

This case study addresses the challenge of increasing throughput without significant capital investment by applying the Sawhney people-centric framework in a marine canvas company. This approach integrates Systems Thinking and Lean to enhance resource reliability through employee-centered strategies. A diagnostic phase, including time studies and reliability assessments, identified critical bottlenecks, workload imbalances, and high non-value-added activities rooted in human and informational reliability. In response, two line balancing strategies were developed. A no-cost personnel reallocation projected a roughly 56% productivity increase (from 16 to 25 units/day), while a modest investment in two additional workers could raise output by approximately 162% (to 42 units/day). Beyond these operational gains, the strategies also reduce employee stress and improve process stability. This study distinguishes itself from much of the existing Lean and Operational Excellence literature by offering an empirical application of a people-centric reliability framework in a small, high-mix, manual production environment. This demonstrates that a people-centric approach offers a powerful, low cost pathway to sustainable operational Excellence in manufacturing, directly addressing the gap between theoretical human-centric paradigms (e.g., Industry 5.0) and practical, low-capital implementation.