Process improvement in a forest products busines with a kaizen approach

Due to the ever-increasing competitive conditions and export requirements in our country, quality and cost come to the fore in businesses. Quality improvement and cost reduction in forest products enterprises can be achieved to a large extent through continuous improvement efforts. In conditions of ever-increasing competition in the forest products sector; the sales of products that are more durable, have more added value, have low formaldehyde emissions and are less harmful to human health continue to increase. In order to meet this increase, continuous improvement efforts in businesses are among the greatest needs. Continuous improvement can be achieved in businesses through studies such as quality circles, brainstorming, and 5S studies. With this study, a process improvement study was carried out with the Kaizen approach in a forest products industry enterprise that is among the top 50 industrial enterprises among the top 500 enterprises published annually by the Istanbul Chamber of Industry. In this study, carried out in the chipboard facility within the enterprise, the problem of clogging of glue lines after melamine urea formaldehyde glue used in export production was investigated. Within the scope of the study, solutions were brought by the brainstorming technique from quality circles. Some chemical lines in the gluing area were revised and the equipment used was backed up. With the implementation of the study, the monthly downtime in production, which was an average of 360 minutes, was reduced to 10-15 minutes. An average monthly capacity gain of 441 m³ was achieved in production. More than 50% gain was achieved in the occupational health and safety and ergonomic risk analysis of the employees in the gluing area, especially occupational accidents and stress factors were reduced and the work tempo was increased.