More checks for less waste in the lamination process of a shipbuilding company pursuing Lean Thinking

Abstract

Lean Thinking is a management philosophy that aims to do more with less through a process of continuous improvement. By employing Lean Thinking principles, the project presented in this article aimed to obtain improvements in the boats’ hulls and decks lamination process of a shipbuilding company. After analysing the current process, some problems were identified. To solve these problems, suggestions were developed, such as the use of checklists, the introduction of quality checkpoints along the production line and a VBA tool for the correct management of the dies. Through the implementation of the suggested proposals, it was expected a decrease in the number of defects and a reduction of the bottleneck cycle time from 90 to 20 min. Interesting findings of this project were that the improvements implied more quality checkpoints in the process, what seems contradictory as checkpoints are considered as non-value activities. This was a remarkable lesson learned by the team of Industrial Engineering and Management students that developed this project in the context of Project-Based Learning active methodology.