Sample Essay On Beck Manufacturing AND Plant Capacity

Beck Manufacturing and Plant Capacity

According to Vonderembse & White (2013), capacity is the measure of an organization’s ability to meet the customers demand for goods and services in the requested amounts and in a timely manner. Capacity can also be defined as the maximum rate of production in an organization. Businesses need to acquire physical facilities, additional human resources, the correct amounts of raw materials and capital in order to achieve the desired levels of production to meet the demands of the customers. In the competitive business world, optimum capacity planning is the most important aspect for any business. This paper would focus on the case study about Beck manufacturing about its plant capacity. Specifically the paper would estimate the capacity of each machine and further determine the capacity of the entire system. Additionally, it would discuss the specific areas where Beck should focus its efforts if it wants to expand its capacity and the additional capacity it would get without causing another operation to become a bottleneck. Lastly, the paper would suggest ways in which the company can expand its capacity without necessarily purchasing new equipment.
First, the organization, Beck Manufacturing, requires assistance with the calculation of each machine’s capacity and also the system capacity. The company has four departments namely: milling, grinding, boring and drilling. Each department is essential in the production of steering gas for auto manufacturers. As noted, the production is product layout oriented where large numbers of nearly identical products are produced. The company produces steering gears for auto manufacturers. Within each department of the company, there are machines that work to produce the steering gear. As Brown, Bessant & Lamming (2013) noted, a manufactured product is often an assembly of a number of parts.
Given the information provided by Al Beck, the president of the company, both the capacity of each machine center and the system capacity. The milling machines are 5 in number and each one of them run 2 pieces at a minute with a 3% rejection rate. This would translate to a 37.5% per minute capacity. The grinding machines, on the other hand, are 7 in number and with a runtime per piece per minute of 3. Factoring in the rejection rate of 5%, the capacity of the grinding department is 78.5%. The boring machines are the least in number with only 3 of them in operation. The runtime per piece per minute is 1with a 2% rejection rate. The capacity of the boring department hence results to 11.25%. The drilling department (the last department in the process) has 6 machines operating at 2.5 runtime per piece per minute with a rejection rate of 7%. As a result, the capacity of the drilling department is 56.25%. Given the capacities of each department, the system capacity can be determined. System capacity is defined as an organization’s ability to produce a sufficient number of goods and services to meet its customer’s demands and needs (Greasely, 2008). The bottleneck in the process is the boring department and hence the capacity of the system is 120 pieces per hour.
In order for the company to expand its capacity, its efforts should be focused on the bottleneck. A bottleneck is defined as a restriction to the production process. From the analysis of Beck’s production process, it can be seen that the boring department is the department that holds back the production process. As compared to the other machines, the boring machine can handle the least number of pieces as it only manages to process a piece per minute. The milling machine handles 2 pieces per minute at full capacity, the grinding machine 3 pieces and the drilling machine 2.5 pieces per minute. Given that the steering gear has to pass through all those departments, the output from the first department forms the input for the next one. The milling machine feeds the grinding machine 2 pieces although it can handle 3 pieces. The grinding machine, on the other hand, feeds the boring department those pieces, but given that the boring machine produces 1 piece per minute at full capacity, only one piece from the grinding department goes to the boring machine at a time. The drilling machine handles upto 6 pieces per minute. Hence, a simple analysis would reveal that the boring department is the bottleneck as it holds back the production of steering gas.
Given that the boring department is the bottleneck and which determines the system’s capacity, Mr. Al Beck would have to focus the company’s efforts on the boring department. A company’s system capacity can be increased by applying resources at the bottleneck department (Vonderembse & White). Using the rounding out system capacity, where resources are applied to the bottleneck department to bring out a balance with the other department in the system, focusing on improving the boring department would result in an expansion of the system’s capacity. Hence, the capacity should be increased by an additional 1 piece at the boring department. As things are in the company, the milling machine has an average slack of 1, the grinding department has a slack of 2, the boring department has zero while the drilling department has a slack of 1.5. An increase by 1 piece in the boring department would result in the cutting back the slack of each department. Doing so will lead to the balancing out the departments and ensuring that the system’s capacity is increased. Additionally, 180 pieces will be produced with the increase in the bottleneck. To ensure that the system’s capacity is increased without causing the other department’ to become bottleneck’s, Al Beck should not increase the size of the boring bottleneck to a capacity that would exceed the capacity of the other departments. An increase in capacity to a level more than the capacities of the other departments would mean that the other departments would fail to process the other pieces. The milling, grinding and drilling departments do not have the capacity to handle more product than what they can handle at the moment.
In order for Mr. Beck to expand the system’s capacity without purchasing new equipment, he should ensure the addition of a third shift for the boring department to ensure the production of the extra pieces. The addition of the extra shift in the boring department would mean that the company would not need to purchase an additional machine. An additional shift in the boring department would translate to an additional number of workers in the boring department to meet the shortage that is brought about by the department’s low handling capacity. At the moment, the boring machines can only handle one piece of steering gear per minute. With an additional shift, making it more shifts in the boring department than the other departments, the boring department would result in a higher production of the steering gear. As Goldratt & Cox (1992) noted, an increase in resources in the bottleneck department would lead to an increase in production and in turn an increase in a plant’s capacity. Additionally, more time should be allocated to the boring department. The boring department should always be working even when the other departments are idle. A worker or workers should always be operating the boring machines including during the lunch breaks. Allowing the machines to work overtime would also ensure that the boring bottleneck produces when the other operations are idle. The more time the boring department works, the more steering gears the company would produce to meet the demands of its customers in time (Goldratt & Cox, 1992).
It is also important for Mr. Al Beck to make sure that downtime is reduced. The company should make sure that scheduled and unscheduled downtime are avoided at all costs as they affect the production of the boring department; the bottleneck. If the boring machines breakdown during the scheduled operations, measures should be taken to dispatch technicians and engineers to carry out repairs so as to get them in operation. Minimizing downtime may involve keeping the replacement parts of the boring machines in hand and carrying out preventive maintenance on the machines. The company should also make sure that only the quality working parts of the boring machines are used in the production process. Time should not be wasted on parts of the machines that are not working. Such parts would mean that the company’s finances would be used to purchase spares and parts for these bad parts and yet they do not contribute to the production process. Quality checks by the quality inspection departments should be done before the operation of the bottleneck’s machines. This will result in an increase in the throughput of the entire production process.

References

Brown, S., Bessant, J. R., & Lamming, R. (2013). Strategic operations management. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Goldratt, E. M., & Cox, J. (1992). The goal: A process of ongoing improvement. Great Barrington, MA: North River Press.
Greasley, A. (2008). Operations management. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Vonderembse, M. A., & White, G. P. (2004). Operations management. San Diego, SA: Bridgepoint Education Inc.