Factory Design - Dissertation Example

? and Section # of Various car companies employ different methods to keep their dominant presence in their respective markets. Industrial manufacturing has undergone a constant development since the invention of machines and different discoveries of machining methodology. The invention of the wheel is history, robotic machineries and sensors have been integrated into production houses to generate a millions of products per time unit. All this was possible by inventing simple at first and then complex repeatable machining and processing ways. The report reflects a very significant aspect of industrial engineering advancement. The research is tied around dyeing and molding methods used by industries to reduce production and change over time between productions of different parts. The parts under consideration over here are car bumpers of two cars, namely Toyota and Nissan UK. A hypothetical factory will be explained which works on the Just-In-Time principle to produce and deliver car bumpers to production line of the said companies in the UK. MOLDING AND DYEING First, let us start with the building block of this review paper. Mould or molding is the initial way or increasing production rate in factory. This is not the sole reason but a part of the reason. The process of molding can be defined as the process of shaping raw material using different means, which have been developed over the years in industrial revolutions and beyond by experimentation and innovation. The caste is the second term which has to be explained. Coming towards the role of the mould or the caste. It is, in simple terms, a hollow shape of the actual part, which has to be produced or manufactured. The raw material, with proper heating and other scientific methods, is poured into the caste, which in terms forms the desired part. The earlier part of the report explains molding as a very simple form of technique, but now it has evolved into a complete science, rather modern art. Injection molding is a industrial process for producing similar parts from thermoplastic and thermosetting plastic material. Heated material is poured into a mold cavity to produce the exact part. The caste is then engineered to perfection for running production. This technique is used vastly now in industries and production houses to produce variety of parts, from the smallest of parts to the very panels on the car, Douglas (1996, pp. 43). The part under discussion in this report is a car bumper that will be produced for two companies, on being Nissan and the other being Toyota. An Injection molding machine is simply a mechanical device invented to take the human factor out of the process of injection molding to as far an extent as possible and in this case, it is related to the bumper of the two car companies. A basic assumption has to be made for the hypothesis about the number of parts manufactured in this factory. The number of parts that this factory produces is four. Two being the front bumpers and two rear for both Toyota and Nissan respectively. EQUIPMNT REQUIRED The machines that would be required to fulfill the demand of two companies with two bumpers (front and rear) respectively will need a minimum of 4 machines to bring about a constant production. As the factory works on just-in-time principle, the raw material will be forecasted and put on demand just when it is needed, hence reducing the cost of storage and constant manning of the resources. The best machine that will be used for fast processing and manufacture of similar parts will be plastic injection molding machine, with the die constructed on order from the owner. As the bumper designs will be provided by Nissan and Toyota, hence a machine is needed which is software operated and the design can be changed according to the demand. The machine that is going to be installed in the factory will be Fangheng, model FH-AB06 produced by Taizhou Huangyan Fangheng Plastic Moulds Co., Ltd. The machine has been chosen after a lot of research and some positive won the vote over. It is an auto bumper molding machine which also has the capability of changing designs when a 3D design is provided to it. It also comes with a CNC machine for fine tuning of the end-product. It is fully computerized and reasonably inexpensive as compared with the other German and European models in the market. Four machines will be required in the factory to fulfill the demands of Toyota and Nissan, as both of them need two bumpers, front and rear, respectively. An injection machine will also be setup to inject the hot raw material into the dyes. The machine will be a one in which the dyes can be changed periodically using SMED method (explained later). Two of these machines will be established in the factory in two different departments. One for the front bumper and the other machine for the production of the rear bumper. SET-UP TIME The set-up time in this scenario will also include the shipping time to the factory. According to the OEM, it will take 20-60 days to deliver. Assuming the delivery be made in 6o days (worst scenario), the machine will take about two days to set up, fed the designs and start production. But in this case, as there are 4 machines, it will approximately take 8 days to set up and enter all four designs in to the software. Each machine will be required a crew to set it up. 6 people, in general of specialized fields, are required to set up one machine. Therefore if the same crew is used for the factory, it will take 8 days but if 4 different set of people are hired, it will take two days. But the expense of hiring 4 different set of people is too high therefore one team working in a single shift will set up the whole machinery setup in 8 days. SMED For comprehending set-up time some terms have to be explained, namely injection time, cycle time and setup time. Injection time is defined as the time it takes to fill a molding dye. The cycle time is maximum time needed to fill up a mold. Whereas the cycle time is the time it takes to change from one mold to another. Its example can be observed in a rotary injection mould machine where the mould shoe is n a periodic fashion periodically. The time taken to change one set of moulds is known as the set-up time. The less it takes to change one set of moulds to another, as per requirement, is known as set-up time of an injection mould machine. Reduced Set-Up Time for the Injection Molding Machines Since the time when man started inventing things, he was obsessed with decreasing the size of his invention. Size mattered in everything from the wheel to the radio antenna, everything. In the same manner, injection-molding machine with changing castes and moulds, a lot of time will be wasted in the factory and the production will be delayed. Hence, a method has to be devised to minimize the time between changing the moulds in the machine. The technique that will be used in the factory is known as Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED). SMED is a quick and efficient way of converting the machine to manufacture one product to the next in the minimum time possible. The lean changeover time shows a quick production and enhanced flow. It is completely adaptable with the “just in time” phenomenon, hence reducing the storage space taken by raw material in a factory. Additionally should be noted that “single-minute” in the term SMED doesn’t show a changeover or initiation within a minute but reflects a single digit time unit which means under 10 minutes (Shigeo, 1981). In this new way the changing of moulds will be done periodically and a lot of work-time will be saved reducing the set up time. PRODUCTION TIME The original settings in this machine allows it to produce two moulds per day, in turn those moulds can be used to produce about 2 bumpers per day in 7 hour day, therefore producing one bumper per 3 hours (including lunch time) . Combining for one type of car for each company makes it 8 bumpers moulds for the day for the two car models. If another set of bumper is required for another model, the order can be taken from the car production company, the mould be made and rapid production can be started in just one day. The bumpers produced from the moulds have a rate of 4 bumpers per day making it 16 bumpers per day in total. MULTIPLE ORDERS In the real world, completing just the one order is not sufficient enough for running a factory and its expenses. Hence multiple orders have to be taken to fulfill the financial requirements. A scenario is created in which, at the same time, Toyota and Nissan both need a set pf bumpers in the same day. A production schedule has to be followed to fulfill the requirement and as to not undermanned the work force working in the factory. This is already being done but if two more car models order arrive, what will be the production schedule as to increase production time. Assume four cars have their bumpers being made now. Two for Toyota T1, T2 and two for Nissan N1, N2. The moulds for T1 and N1 are already under process as a daily routine but a new mould has to be made for the car model N2 and T2. Four new molds will be needed for the two new cars. Immediate orders will be given to the team to set up the mold machine for producing molds. As it takes about 3 hours to make a mold, 4 different moulds will be created on the four machines ordered by entering the 3D designs received from the companies. The production of bumpers for T1 and N1 will however be continuing in the production part of the company. New and more raw material will be ordered for the bumpers of T2 and N2 by the time there are molds are ready for the injection process, they should have arrived. The production schedule is explained in the form of a schedule chart over the period of two days. FACTORY LOCATION The consideration for the factory site was a tiresome job. An excellent balance had to be stroked between the distance and cost of delivering the items. The two companies with the biggest number of orders for our company lie approximately 158 miles from each other. A location had to be chosen so that both car factories of Nissan and Toyota in Sunderland and Derby are equally distant from our factory. The place that has been chosen for the factory is Harrogate as it is almost as much as the distance from Sunderland as from Derby. The Google earth image below depicts the same fact with the factories and route marked: © Google maps The map shows the location of the factory. The factory will be; approximately, be 80 miles away from the Nissan factory in Sunderland and about 90 miles away from the Toyota factory in Derby. Both journeys by road on a car will take about two hours but about 4 hours when the goods will be shipped on a shipping vehicle as the sped of the vehicle is less than the car. The main advantage of such a location will be the budget saved in transportation and labor cost per hour. If one or both the factories are far away from the car bumper factory, it will cost a lot more time traveling and delivering the products than the scheme than is presently being followed. The main advantage is the fact that the deliveries can be forecasted as well along with saving money. Due to this the storage facilities that has to be used inside the factory, that are a costly matter, can be minimized. Hence the end goal is achieved which is to maximize profits by the end of the fiscal year so that the factory runs prosperously. PRODUCTION LABOUR COST For finding our costs some assumptions have to be made. The assumptions are Stock used up at a constant rate (R units per year), fixed setup cost co for each order, no lead time between order and arrival of order and variable holding cost ch per unit per year. Then Q has to be calculated, which is the batch size. With these assumptions the graph of stock level over time takes the form shown below. Therefore total annual cost = ch(Q/2) + co(R/Q) The amount in exact dollars depends upon variety of factors. For instance holding cost will be dependable as the amount of holding in our factory in minimum. Similarly other factors are involved which can not be calculated exactly by the equation. CONCLUSION Running a factory is a very difficult job. A lot of variables still cannot be described in this brief report. Many hidden costs plague the administration in running the factory. Keeping all the assumptions in mind like cost, set up time , machines used and factory location will have more probability to produce a favorable balance sheet. The factory that has been hypothetically set up makes bumpers for two different companies at the same time and has the capability of increasing production when more demand comes by increasing man power. The methodology used in this factory is based on JIT (just-in-time) where the raw material used for molding bumpers, which is plastic, is delivered to the factory just before it is required to be used. A limited storage capacity is enough to store materials overnight to be used on the next day hence improve the profits by a great deal as the factory does not have to be place on a huge area, rather a one with a small storage room will do. This report can be concluded by the fact that any factory or business can only be successful if prior planning is done and unscheduled hurdles are foreseen by the organizing force of the factory/business. BIBLIOGRAPHY Douglas, B. (1996) Plastic Injection Molding: Manufacturing Process Fundamentals. SME Shigeo, S. (1981) Study of TOYOTA Production System. Japan. Productivity Press Image retrieved from www.google.com (2011), available from http://maps.google.com/ [25-04-2011] Machinery purchase survey from www.alibaba.com (2011), available from http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/433401651/newly_plastic_auto_car_bumper_mould.html [24-04-2011] Read More