Implementation of lean manufacturing methods to improve rolling mill productivity

In recent years, the steel industry has been under pressure due to high operating costs and product quality issues.Due to globalization and technological development, high productivity, good quality and low cost are important factors for business organizations to survive in the competitive market 1,2.According to the World Steel Association, by 2050, the steel demand is expected to increase by 1.5 times to meet the needs of a growing population.Therefore, it is a big challenge for steel manufacturers to meet customer demand with low-cost and good-quality products 3,4.Lean manufacturing (LM) is an advanced methodology to improve the performance of the company.It is widely adopted in various manufacturing sectors such as automobiles, textiles, and steel 510 to improve the performance.Researchers and technicians have studied and reported that the implementation of LM plays an important role in improving production with low cost 1117.*Author for correspondence LM, also known as the lean production system, originated at the Japanese company Toyota, which was separated from global competition for decades.Lean is a set of tools and methodologies that aim to reduce waste in the production system and improve productivity 18.It is not a new technology, but it is still widely used by manufacturing industries across the world.The most commonly used lean methods in steel manufacturing industries to improve productivity are single minute exchange of die (SMED), value stream mapping, seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu, and shitsuke (5S), Kaizen, total productive maintenance (TPM) and many others 1923.Among these methods, TPM and SMED methods are widely used in manufacturing industries.TPM is a maintenance program that involves a newly defined concept for maintenance plants and equipment.TPM originated in the Japanese car industry in the 1970s 23.TPM is an inclusive approach to increase operational efficiency.Its main objective is to reduce