Improving Productivity and Quality in SMEs of Pakistan: A case

study.
Introduction:

 As technology is advancing, SMEs have to improve their performances.

 SMEs are one of the major contributors of country’s GDP.
 To overcome performance issues, SMEs have to use advance tools for processes.

Objectives:

 Main objective of this research is to highlight major issues related to productivity and
quality and then use different concepts for their improvement.

Literature Review:

 Total Quality Management approach is adopted.

 Quality is directly linked with overall productivity of the working system.
 Real challenge for organizations is to attain and sustain competitiveness based on improved
productivity and consistent quality.

Methodology:

 Two separate frameworks have been developed.

 Case study carried out at a local fan manufacturing company, where the objective was to
validate the usefulness of proposed frameworks of productivity and quality improvements.

Analysis:

Issues Highlighted:

 It can be seen that there are many variations in terms of task completion time for every
manufacturing process. Basic time for all seven processes is different which shows an
overall unbalance in the production activity.
 Data shows a significant percent of rework (4.3%) and rejection rate (1.4%). It has been
further found that there is no specific pattern found in quality rejection and rework data.
  Data revealed that major problems are touch inside, unbalance, short circuiting in armature,
bearing noise/loose bearing assembly – that contribute about 70% of total defects.

Suggestions:

 For the purpose of improving existing layout, a smaller production cell layout has been
suggested.
 Unbalance problem is caused due to casting problems like poor material quality and non-
standardization of casting parameters, a team of experts with quality related people was
constituted and a work plan was decided to ameliorate these problems.

Conclusion:

 A framework for productivity and quality improvement has been developed and
implemented successfully in a small fan manufacturing company at Central Punjab, where
significant improvements in productivity and quality have been analyzed.
 Precisely, the implementation of proposed productivity and quality related frameworks
resulted into improvements like 65.7% decrease in distance travelled, 30% decrease in the
number of workers, 80% decrease in WIP and 68% improvement in quality related issues.