Introduction Per Vonderembse & White (2013), Beck manufacturing produces steering gears for auto manufacturers. The president of the company, Al Beck, wants to know the capacity of the facility. Mr. Beck has asked me to sort through the data to determine the capacity of the system and find out a way to increase it. The facility operates for two 8 hour shifts a day with a 3rd shift for maintenance purposes. The layout I am presented with consists of a product layout that produces large numbers of identical products. These products are; milling, grinding, boring, drilling and assembling. All of these products use a different machine. The industrial engineering department has provided me with the data I need to calculate the capacity (Vonderembse
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3419). In the company, there are currently five working stations which consists of; one for milling, one for grinding and another one is for boring. The last two are for assembly and drilling operations. As stated in the case, we have been told that assembly operations can be changed to meet the needs. Using the equipment the company already has, table 1 illustrates what each department can …show more content…
After analyzing the data from table 2, I believe the bottleneck department would the boring operation. Although the timeframe is pretty fast, there are only 3 machines. If Mr. Beck was wanting to focus on expanding capacity this would be the operation to look at. If he was open to adding more machines I would say he could double the machines making it 6 machines thus increasing the capacity to level out with the other operations. But since he is wanting to avoid buying new machinery than he could also think about maybe adding more shifts for this specific operation thus increasing the
3419). In the company, there are currently five working stations which consists of; one for milling, one for grinding and another one is for boring. The last two are for assembly and drilling operations. As stated in the case, we have been told that assembly operations can be changed to meet the needs. Using the equipment the company already has, table 1 illustrates what each department can …show more content…
After analyzing the data from table 2, I believe the bottleneck department would the boring operation. Although the timeframe is pretty fast, there are only 3 machines. If Mr. Beck was wanting to focus on expanding capacity this would be the operation to look at. If he was open to adding more machines I would say he could double the machines making it 6 machines thus increasing the capacity to level out with the other operations. But since he is wanting to avoid buying new machinery than he could also think about maybe adding more shifts for this specific operation thus increasing the