Assignment title: Business Improvement Techniques

Purpose of this assignment

The economy of today's world is driving companies to be proactive in reducing cost and increasing efficiency and quality in order to compete. The most competitive companies utilise a range of business improvement techniques to optimise processes and therefore reduce cost. This means efficient use of all workforce, equipment and suppliers.

Scenario

Renewable energy is an ever growing and therefore increasingly competitive market. You have been asked to run a project for a company called WindPower Ltd. Your role is to identify business processes improvements across the entire production lifespan of the turbine blade.

The company needs you to help them to identify improvements in key areas:

Lead time - Materials are either arriving too early or too late leading to a glut of stored material or the line having to be stopped as key parts have not arrived. They need to determine where the constraints are and understand the causes.

Set-Up reduction - The infusion process seems to be taking a lot of manpower and time. They need to determine what the issues are and have an alternative procedure for a new setup identified.

Maintenance - The maintenance across the facility is sporadic and therefore many operations are interrupted by regular breakdowns, this is also leading to the quality of the product to be unreliable. The company desire to enhance the volume of the production, employee morale and job satisfaction.

Optimised Production Technology - The board of directors would like to have a greater understanding of this approach to manufacturing.

The website below contains information on the manufacture of a turbine blade, your knowledge of manufacture is not being assessed in this assignment.

http://www.gurit.com/files/documents/4_blade_processes.pdf

Task

Your role is to prepare a professional report for the board of directors, demonstrating that you have evaluated a number of tools and methods in helping to find solutions to the issues identified in the scenario above.

You will show that you have gathered appropriate information and used analysis techniques to determine lead times, bottle necks, including a CEDAC diagram.

You will research and understand the infusion process and using set-up analysis techniques, suggest ways in which efficiencies can be made.

You will research and evaluate the TPM methodology and come to professional conclusions that can be given to the board of directors. You will also identify the countermeasures for chronic and sporadic
loss and explain the scope of TPM

You will research and provide an explanation of the importance of the principles of OPT and the aims of OPT using professional formatting that can be used to educate the board of directors, including recommendations for improvements to meet the aims of OPT. Using throughput accounting, measure the performance of the factory. You may be creative with the manufacturing numbers.

Extension task - You will evaluate your report in terms of further reading and advancement for the board of directors.