Analysis and Improvement of Operational Performance in a Machine-Paced Department: A Lean Manufacturing Case Study at Isoclima Group

This thesis was developed during an internship at Considi S.p.A. (Società Benefit), a leading Italian management and strategic consulting firm in the field of operations strategy and performance improvement, in collaboration with Isoclima Group, a manufacturer of high-performance glass solutions. The main topic of the thesis is the analysis of material and information flows within the Chemical Tempering Department of the Saletto di Borgo Veneto plant. The department represents the bottleneck of Isoclima’s production process, which makes the identification of its inefficiencies a priority not only for the department itself, but for overall plant throughput. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first is dedicated to the theory, presenting the history and evolution of Lean Thinking, starting from Taiichi Ohno’s Toyota Production System, followed by its five founding principles and the seven wastes. The main tools of Lean Manufacturing are then introduced, highlighting their role within a continuous improvement process. This part also addresses performance measurement in a Lean environment, examining how indicators such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and Overall Labour Effectiveness (OLE) are constructed and in which production context each becomes meaningful. The second part discusses the project study of this thesis. Unlike the departments in which the consulting team had previously operated, Chemical Tempering is a highly automated, machine-paced process, a characteristic that shapes both how performance should be measured and where improvement opportunities lie. The current state of the department is mapped and the main losses and constraints are analyzed. Improvement proposals are then developed, aimed at making the internal flow more linear and balanced, supporting the more labour-intensive phases of the process, standardizing work practices around the pace of the machine and proposing the integration of OEE alongside OLE into a dual performance measurement system capable of offering a complete view of the department’s performance. The objective of this thesis is to identify the sources of waste in the Chemical Tempering Department and to define improvement actions through the application of Lean principles capable of enhancing its performance.