Case Study: Circuit Board Fabricators Inc. Essay Example

of boards that process engineers insist that the plant can run.

CBF does is not enough capacity to meet the needs of the customer when losing 20 % of their boards to defects. The impact of the losses in the inspection process and final inspection is enormous when CBF has built in a 25 % cushion to account for loses in these two areas.Loses in final inspection and the inspection process leaves Circuit Boards Fabricators Inc. with a 5 % error of margin on the boards that it ships to their customers.

With numbers this low the circuit boards that CBF ship has to be perfect because of loses in the inspection process and final inspection. As a consultant, the recommendation for the short term process solution to CBF’s problems would be to raise the level of quality of blank boards coming into CBF’s manufacturing facility.

The size of the order needs to be increased to give CBF the ability to ship enough good boards to their customers. More people should be added for the short term to speed of the process until the quality issues can be fixed. For the longterm CBF should continue to insist on a higher quality blank board for their suppliers. CBF should have process engineers go over the processes within their company to be sure that the process is running at a sufficient level to produce to quality and number of circuit boards that CBF needs to ship to their customers on a daily bases.

In the longterm CBF should add another line with newer equipment to meet the quality standards need to produce more circuit boards than they need. CBF can assure

that their capacity needs will be met by adding a new line and new equipment. The data in the case shows that CBF has a capacity to make 1000 circuit boards per day, but they can only produce at their maximum 700 boards per day. CBF increases the size of each customers order by 25 % to account for the loses of 15 % in the inspection process and 5 % in the final inspection process, this leaves a 5 % margin of error for circuit boards shipped to their customers.

CBF needs to decrease the number of circuit boards falling out in the initial inspection process to give the company better results in the finial inspection process. Performance requirements should start with a better blank circuit board from CBF’s suppliers. CBF should also lower the percent of bad circuit boards that the process sends through the preparation process need to prepare the boards for final inspection and shipping. To improve performance CBF should get better quality blank boards to save money, increase quality, and production to save time in shipping circuit boards to their customers.The top three processes for improvement in CBF manufacturing process are effectiveness, efficiency and quality.

The process that CBF use to get the number of good circuit boards can be improved by other means to give better results. My company could use these steps to better their process. BFS has been guilty of making tires over the production objective because the company knew that a certain number of tires would not pass final inspection. This process has since changed when Bridgestone Tire Company bought Firestone Tire Company in 1988.

In conclusion CBF has

used a process that would produce a certain number of circuit boards but did not yield the number of quality circuit boards needed to satisfy the needs of their customer therefore, CBF need to apply more effective and efficient ways to produce a better quality board in the amount needed to supply their customers.

Reference:

1. Operations Management for Competitive Advantage (10th ed.) Richard B. Chase, F. Robert Jacobs, and Nicholas J. Aquilano McGraw-Hill, 2004 New York, NY