Circuit Board Fabricators Case Essay -- Business Case Study

CBF has hired you to help determine why they are not able to produce the 1,000 boards per day. 1. What type of process flow structure is CBF using? The company is using a batch shop process flow structure. CBF, Inc. bases its board fabrication process on the average job size or on its typical order. This means that the company proceeds with the manufacturing process in batches so as to meet the specific requirements per order. The typical contract that the company currently gets is 60 boards per order. However, due to persisting factory defects, they manufacture a total of 75 boards per batch in order to compensate for 20% of the boards that they typically reject during the process. 2. Diagram the process in a manner similar to exhibit 6.7. According to the book, the diagram is an operation and route sheet that specifies operations and process routing for a particular part. It conveys such information as the type of equipment, tooling and operations required to complete the particular part. The "Setup Hr." is derived from dividing the setup (minutes per job, as illustrated in exhibit 6.9) by 60 minutes. Likewise, the hourly capacity of each operation (Rate Pc. Hr.) is solved by dividing 60 minutes by the run (minutes per part, as shown in exhibit 6.9). 3. Analyze the capacity of the process. The first thing to consider is the process of cleaning and coating of the boards. This particular process involves the set-up of the machines, the loading of the boards, and the actual cleaning and coating of the said boards by the machines. From the computations above, it is clearly illustrated that there is a disparity between the loading of the boards into the machines and the output of the cleaning and the coati... ...es. 2) Enhance or re-engineer the cleaning and coating machines to improve capacity. Basically, the focus of the recommendations is to reduce the disparities between the capacities of the processes involved. Ideally, their outputs must be equal if not, similar to the preceding and succeeding procedures in order to achieve an efficient manufacturing process. The company is also faced with a 20% reject rate that is absolutely unacceptable. A lot of the produced boards go to waste, and a lot of resources are compromised. Moreover, it contributes to the manufacturing strain, as the production team must start with at least 20% more than the required output just to give allowances to the defects. CBF, Inc. should implement a more rigid supervising/monitoring program with the manufacturing processes in order to pinpoint and arrest the cause of these defects.