Methods Improvement for Manual Packaging Process

This article discusses the methods improvement in packaging department at traditional herbal pharmacy company. In this department, all processes are still done manually using human power, consist of labeling process, pillbox packaging process, and dozen packaging process. The consequence, a good standard method should be needed to do these processes. The Two-Hand Process Chart and micromotion study are used to analyze the present method. Based on this analysis, the methods improvement is done to find a better method to do the packaging process. The improvements include the revision of hand motions that are categorized as ineffective motion in each process and the design of temporary box as a tool for dozen packaging process. Experiments of the proposed method showed the cycle time reduction of labeling is 0.64 seconds (28) per bottle and the combination of pillbox and dozen packaging is 17.46 seconds (25.83) per dozen.