Chapter 07 Case Study P.165- Operations and Supply Chain Management 15th edition: Circuit Board Fabricators, Inc. is a small manufacturer of circuit boards located in California near San Jose. Companies such as Apple Computer and Hewlett Packard use the company to make boards for prototypes of new products. It is important that CBF give quick and very high quality service. The engineers working on the new product are on a tight schedule and have little patience with sloppy work or missed delivery dates. Circuit boards are a rigid flat surface where electronic components are mounted. Electronic components such as integrated circuits, resistors, capacitors, and diodes are soldered to the boards. Lines called “traces” are etched on the board and electronically connect the components. Since the electronic traces cannot cross, holes through the circuit board are used to connect traces on both sides of the boards, allowing complex circuits to be implemented. These boards are often designed with 40 or 50 components that are connected through hundreds of traces on a small four by six inch board. CBF has developed a good business plan. It has four-standard size board configurations and has automated much of its process.for making these standard boards. fabricating the boards requires CBF’s numerically controlled(NC) equipment to be programmed. This is largely an automated process that works directly from engineering drawings that are formatted using industry standard codes. Currently, the typical order is for 60 boards. Engineers at customer companies prepare a computer-aided design (CAD) drawing of the board. This CAD drawing precisely specifies each circuit trace, circuit pass-through holes, and component mounting points on the board. An electronic version of the drawing is used by a CBF process engineer to program the NC machines used to fabricate the board. Due to losses in the system, CBF has a policy of increasing the size of an order by 25 percent. For example, for a typical order consisting of 60 boards, 75 boards would be started through the process. Fifteen percent of the boards are typically rejected during an inspection that occurs early in the manufacturing process and another 5 percent of the remaining boards are rejected in the final test. Answer the following questions in your Case Study. CBF hired you to help determine why it is not able to produce the 1,000 circuit boards per day. 1.What type of process flow structure is CBF using? What could other types of process flow structures have been used? Compare and contrast these structures and explain which method(s) would be feasible for use at CBF and which one would be best for CBF, if different from the structure CBF is currently using. 2.Analyze the capacity of the process. Are the capacities of all the processes/machines balanced? If some are not, which processes/machines are they and can you determine a cause for the imbalance? 3.What is the impact of the losses in the process in the inspection and final test? 4.List and fully explain the recommendations would you make for a short-term solution to CBF’s problems? How would you define “short-term solution” to CBF in terms of days or months? 5.What long-term recommendations would you make? Describe why these recommendations are different from your short-term solutions.

1. I think the process flow strusture CBF uses is the Batch type as the volumes is less and as well as the design of the circuit board can vary easily. (i.e) many products. so it is necessary to use the batch type of flow. The other type of flows are the job shop (customizated product), Assembly line (more batches more products) and Continuous job (more batch and less product). the differences are listed can be infered from within the brackets. if it were to take the boards to 1000 / day, it must be assembly line or the continuous job process flow. as it will be cost effective and also standardized.
2. Capacity of the process is not balanced as we can see total losses of 25% in which 15% accounts for the defects noted in the begining and 5% at the end test. so it is imperative to change the machines which are present at the begining so that the losses can be eliminated. one reason we can find for the defects at the begining is that the machine works directly from the Engineering Drawing that has been loaded into the NC machine system.
3. Losses are quite high in the process and it affects the perfomrnance of the process. Already, the errors are at a whopping 25 % more than the usual. Impacts are always primarily monetary (i.e) cash, and the other impacts would be reputation of the company.
4. short term solutions can be increase the wastage to provide the customer the neceassary support, fix the machines for short term so that we can plan for buying the new one in the near future. run with the same process flow for a shorter time or try for a different process structure one by one to check which one works effectively and efficiently. Short term solutions are generally pertains to the time period within months of 3 or within a month of 30 days. more than the above mentioned time, would derogate the company’s reputation.
5. Long term recommendations are much different than the short term solutions. the problem can be sorted out by purchasing a new machine which has more specifications than the older one to get better results. Hire new and skilled employee so that the drawing is perfect and error free and not repetitive. mainly, increase the orders and quantities so that different process structures can be tried and changed according to the best suited one. All the long term solutions are costlier than the short term solutions, but it will be a useful solution in terms of reputation in the long term.
 
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