Waste Reduction in Packing Process of Grey Oyster Mushroom Cubes in Plastic Bags

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study the packing process of Grey Oyster Mushroom cubes in plastic bags, explore and reduce incurred loss through recording the packing method, studying time spent of such a process with direct time study on repetitive timing basis for designing the current state value stream mapping in order to analyze value-added and non-value-added activities.  The research findings demonstrate that a total of work cycle time spent is equivalent to 488.5 seconds or 8.14 minutes with lead time of 36,528.5 seconds or 608.81 minutes in which there are 1.63 % of value-added activities and 98.66 % of non-value-added activities, respectively. Considering loss incurred in the captioned process, it is found that the works during the production process or placing of materials for the next process affects the beginning and finishing time of the next process causing a delay period. The researcher thereby applied the 5W-1H questioning technique to find out the root cause and solution to improve the working process according to the ECRS methodology by changing the working process into U-shape flow diagram so that there was no recirculation flow, defining clear scope of works with integration of working process. As a result, there was a decrease of working area and 4-metre decrease of the distance between moving baskets of mushroom cubes to the streamer. In addition, time study and mapping of the future state value stream after improvement were subsequently conducted to demonstrate the reduction of non-value-added activities changed from 98.66 % to 93.02 or 5.35 % decrease.