Design for improvement of sugar factory performance based on statistical thinking

Abstract The amount of sugar production is determined, among others, by the quality of sugar cane and the performance of sugar factory equipment. The quality of sugar cane as an agricultural product is influenced by the quality of sugar cane seeds, soil conditions and climate. The differences in the factors affect the quality of sugarcane production. Sugarcane milling is not based on the quality of sugarcane but on the arrival time to the factory. Under this condition, different sugarcane qualities will be milled together. As a consequence, it may not yield the optimal sugar production. In the sugar production process, equipment performance must always be monitored. Equipment failure will reduce the amount of sugar produced. Therefore, efforts to increase sugar production must consider both factors, namely the variation of input quality and monitoring of equipment performance. One approach in solving this problem is statistical thinking approach. The purpose of the paper is to design the performance improvement of sugar factory based on statistical thinking. The improving activity based on statistical thinking will concentrate on manufacturing process enhancement and problem breaking that rely on realizing and degrading variation. The study shows that the statistical thinking approach potentially able to increase sugar production using process enhancement framework and overcome factory equipment failure using problem breaking framework.