Design and development of a research methodology towards improving the supply chain efficiency and enhancing assembly line improvements of a small scale industry

Abstract

Organizations need proper utilization of existing resources which leads to generate more revenue irrespective of any type of organizations like, manufacturing, service, etc. Manufacturing industry requires utmost influences to achieve good quality both in their products and processes. Furthermore, manufacturing industries need to increase their standards to cope with the global competitors. Most of the manufacturing segments are facing inability in their supply chain process to increase efficiency. Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SME) are having outstanding growth in manufacturing segment throughout the world. SMEs are backbone of countryand#8223;s economy and these provides huge employment when compared to large scale industrial segments. In the literature review, the impacts of manufacturing industry and role of small and medium scale industries are reviewed. Further, the role and influence of process mapping, inventory management, supplier selection methods through Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques are elaborated in literature review. In this research small scale industrial sector is targeted for improvements in assembly process line and supply chain. Further, the focus of the research is to identify a small scale industrial sector which needs the above said improvements. In the preliminary stage of research, the focus is to undergo widespread field study to identify a small scale manufacturing sector. From the output obtained through the field study, small scale pump manufacturing sector is narrowed down and further research is undertaken. Data collection is carried out in the identified pump manufacturing industrial sector to narrow down the problems faced by the industry and to know their current supply chain practices. To achieve this, a self-administrated questionnaire is adopted and survey is carried out. Various parameters are considered through structured questionnaire, output achieved from survey are realised to be some of the issues in pump assembly line alike: inefficiency of supplier d