Improving inspection time at vehicle inspection stations.

Lean Production was born in the Toyota Factory. The reason was a strike which Toyota had faced in 1950, which was the first and only strike in Toyota's entire life. This solution forced Toyota managers to search a solution. The solution came from Taiichi Ohno, who is a genius engineer of Toyota. Taiichi Ohno pioneered to build the system and since then strikes have never taken place again in Toyota and Toyota became one of the giants of automobile industry. Toyota became an accepted model of the lean production system for other companies. Basicly, lean production is the total activities to define inessential wasting, or things that do not add value to the process. In this thesis, the process in vehicle examination stations in automotive field are studied. Vehicle examination stations, which have an important place in the automotive sector, are the places where the mechanical deformations caused by factors such as car accidents, bad motorway conditions and the cars' aging are examined to approve that the car is safe to be used. Since the beginning of 2008, the vehicle examinations in Turkey have been done in parallel with international standards. This is a study in which the queues, waiting time and time wasted in this process are mapped out and analyzed by applying lean solutions. It has been revealed that there are improvements that can be made about the process in the application study at the vehicle inspection station. From the inspection processes, the lost times in the processes, especially the brake test, sub-control, headlight test, have been reduced. Results have been obtained that customers complete their tasks faster and waiting times are reduced. It has been seen that employees also have a happier working environment.