Author : Dr. Varsha Karandikar*, Dr Grish Kotwal, Prof. Gajanan Gambhire Omkar Taksale and Makarand Ambole

Rotary tube bundle dryer is commonly used for different industrial applications right from corn fiber drying, corn gluten drying, corn germ drying and wheat fiber drying. A manufacturing company has various units for manufacturing critical process equipment such as heat exchanger, tube bundle dryer which provide different application across the world including chemical industry and pharmaceutical industry. The industry provides tube bundle dryers as per requirement to the customer. The average cycle time taken to manufacture a rotary tube dryer at is around 62 days, out of which 20 percent of the processes have 80 percent of throughput time. Hence, the study was conducted to identify and improve on the wastes in these major processes to reduce the waiting time and to increase the touch time of the dryer, leading an overall reduction in cycle time. This study was conducted to analysis each and every process of dryer manufacturing. Time study was conducted to collect the data of the entire process by videography. The major process was analyzed to identify bottlenecks and waiting time. The improvements were done to reduce the throughput time of the process.

Keywords: Process improvement, Cycle time, Work System Analysis, Bottlenecks, Resource optimization