42.3% Productivity Increase at Pencil Factory
From 742 to 1,056 UPH after 4 years of continuous operating system improvement.
The Problem
At a pencil manufacturing plant, productivity is not only limited by the workers' speed but also by multiple factors in the operating system: management structure, resource allocation, lost time during shifts, bottlenecks between stages, layout, and production flow.
Therefore, the goal is not to demand workers to work faster, but to:
"Eliminate factors that make one labor hour generate less value than the system's actual capacity."
System Improvement Over Task Improvement
Production
Organization
Reorganize stage management and increase resource coordination capacity.
Manpower &
Capacity
Measure actual productivity, control labor hours and deploy personnel based on demand.
Flow
Improve layout, resolve bottlenecks and shorten the production flow.
Waste
Elimination
Reduce waiting, transportation, motion and non-value-adding tasks.
Standard &
Kaizen
Standardize effective solutions and replicate them across other stages.
Digital
Digitize shop-floor production data to support Daily Management.
742 → 1,056 UPH
+42.3% direct labor productivity
The result does not come from a single Kaizen event, but from a continuous process of improving organization, manpower utilization, flow, work standards, and operational data (2022–2025).