Beck Manufacturing and Plant Capacity Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

Beck Manufacturing and Plant Capacity
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Beck Manufacturing and Plant Capacity
Capacity can be defined as the maximum amount a firm/machine/worker can produce in a given time period. It is considered to be the entire cycle and time a machine runs and thus what it can produce in total CITATION Nei07 \l 1033 (Neil, 2007). It can be expressed using the formula below;
Capacity = (No. of Machines) x (number of shifts/amount of time in use) x (Utilization) x (Efficiency). Therefore, the machine capacity in this case study will be as follows;
Milling: 5 machines x 2 shifts x 8 hrs x 60 mins/hr x ½ (Utilization) x (100% - 3%, efficiency) = 5 x 480 x 97% = 2,328.
Grinding: 7 x 2 x 8 x 60 x 1/3 x 95% = 7 x 320 x 95% = 2,128.
Boring: 3 x 2 x 8 x 60 x 1 x 98% = 3 x 960 x 98% = 2,822.4.
Drilling: 6 x 960 x ½.5 x 93% = 6 x 384 x 93% = 2,142.72.
The system capacity will be achieved by summing up all the machine capabilities. That is, 2,328 + 2,128 + 2,822.4 + 2,142.72 = 9,421.12.
State that, to achieve maximum capacity with no underutilization of machinery, the capacity planning processes should consider the machine efficiency, time of operations and the number of shifts, which are to be at the maximum. Beck Manufacturing Company has to focus on the maintenance time, working shifts and the reject rate. The Company should reduce the reject rate to a limit of 1% in each machine. This will ensure that the number of defective products is reduced while complete finished products increase. This will increase each machine’s production of the right finished products to 99%. This will increase capacity as follows:
Milling: +2% = 5 x 480 x 0.02 = 48
Grinding: +4% = 7 x 320 x 0.04 = 89.6
Boring: +1% = 3 x 960 x 0.01 = 28.8
Drilling: +6% = 6 x 384 x 0.06 = 138.24
After focusing on the reject rate, then the company should consider increasing the maintenance staff, and then after this reduce the maintenance time to allow for a four-hour shift to be a third one for the machines to operate. Since the machines were initially running for 16 hours, 4 hours in addition would mean a quarter is added to the operation time. This will in turn increase capacity by a quarter. To achieve this new capacity, we add the previous one, with the new capacity arrived at after minimizing rejects, then we multiply the results by 0.25 (Quarter) to get the additional capacity. This will be as follows;
Milling: (2,328 + 48) x 0.25 = 594
Grinding: (2,128 + 89.6) x 0.25 = 554.4
Boring: (2,822.4 + 28.8) x 0.25 = 712.8
Drilling: (138.24 + 2,142.72) x 0.25 = 570.24
As seen above, the areas of focus for capacity expansion will be in the maintenance department and hence adding a third shift of machine operation and also the company can focus on the reject rate. Its reduction increases percentage performance.
Efficiency measures should help Operation Managers improve the company machine operations CITATION Hir99 \l 1033 (Hirschfeld, 1999). This will thus improve the manufacturing productivity hence capacity. Therefore, Beck Manufacturing should strive to improve the machinery overall effective efficiency, reduce the rate of rejects, employ quality experts for maintenance thus they will be in good condition to be used. This in turn will improve productivity and hence improve capacity. Another way to improve capacity is through Addition of maintenance experts. This will ensure that machines are serviced as fast...