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Purpose – To increase productivity in an automotive assembly plant to satisfy customer demand and also develop best practices for productivity improvement for robotic welding operation lines. Design/methodology/approach – Principles of lean manufacturing and constrained management have been applied to increase the plant's output in order. Constrained management was used to identify bottlenecks in the plant that limits the throughput and lean manufacturing helped to identify waste (muda) in the constrained production areas. Analytical tools such as matrices are used for mapping sequence of robotics movements to identify interference and desired path for welding line. Findings – Results of applying constrained management and lean manufacturing in tandem have revealed the plant's overall bottlenecks and means of increasing the throughput. Research limitations/implications – The research findings are from an automotive assembly plant in a mass production industry, and the results may not be applicable to other types of industry. Practical implications – A very useful best practice for the productivity improvement that is easy to use by plants' management to help them identify and manage bottlenecks, and to eliminate waste from the production system. Originality/value – This paper offers practical and easy‐to‐use productivity improvement tools based on lean and constrained management principles to help manufacturing managers to make their operations more productive.