Quality/Quantity Improvement in an Automotive Paint Shop: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of a continuous improvement project at an automotive paint shop. The development is based on a recently developed improvement methodology for production systems with quality-quantity coupled operations, whereby increasing the probability to complete a job during a cycle time leads to decreasing job quality. The implementation of the first stage of the project resulted in over 9% throughput improvement. The second stage predicts additional improvement of 9.5%.