Lean Manufacturing as an Alternative Operational Process in a Small Printing Organization in Johannesburg

A small printing company in Johannesburg has experienced a steady decline in profits over the past four years, and wishes to reverse this trend. The objective of this study was to assess the implementation of Lean Manufacturing in that context, and to determine the impact it had on the printing company’s profit margin. A process-mapping of the printing organization was performed; this process-mapping is referred to as ‘Value Stream Mapping’, which is a Lean Manufacturing technique. The results achieved strongly suggest that Value Stream Mapping contributed to the achievement of greater availability, better quality and increased revenues for the printing company. The improvements contributed to increasing the Sheeter department availability from 55% to 75%, the Litho department availability from 65% to 76% and the Gluing department from 55% to 91%. This study found that over a one-year period, over 10.6 million Rands could be saved by implementing Lean Manufacturing in those departments. These findings have significant implications for the printing company, and could make a positive contribution to improving the availability of machines, which implies increased product production, and the possibility of increased profits.