Circuit Board Fabricators

Issue Identification

Circuit Board Fabricators, Inc. (CBF) is a small manufacturer of circuit boards located in California. Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard use this company to make boards for prototypes of new products. CBF's aims to quickly provide very high-quality service and has developed a good business plan. CBF produces four standard size board configurations and has automated much of its CBF's board fabrication process for making these standard boards. A typical circuit board order consists of 60 boards. Due to losses in the system, CBF has implemented a policy to increase the size of its orders by 25 percent. The CBF plant was originally designed to run 1,000 boards per day when running a five day weekly or eight-hour per day shift. However, capacity on a good day only produces approximately 700 boards (Jacobs & Chase, 2011). To mitigate the risk of continuing this negative trend, this paper will review the steps involved in CBF's board fabrication process, to identify areas that can be eliminated, combined, automated or improved to yield optimal production and greater efficiencies.

Frame Work

CBF uses a job shop process flow structure and by analyzing the data concerning CBF's fabrication ordering process, it is obvious that the company's capacity is less than required to meet the demands of their customers. It this problem is not resolved quickly, CBF runs the chance of damaging their company's image, losing preferred customers, and losing advantage to its competitors (Jacobs & Chase, 2011).

Required Output per shift 1000

Average Job Size (boards) 60 75

Production hours per day 7.5

Working Days per Week 5

Process/Machine Number of Machines Number of Employees Setup Time

(min. per job) Run Time

(min. per part) Average Size of Job (boards) Operation time per order Capacity per day (jobs)

Load 1 1 5 0.33 75.00 29.75 15.13

Clean 1 0.50 75.00 37.50 12.00

Coat 1 0.50 75.00 37.50 12.00

Unload 1 1 0.33 75.00 24.75 18.18

Expose 5 5 15 1.72 75.00 144.00 15.63

Load 1 1 5 0.33 75.00 29.75 15.13

Develop 1 0.33 75.00 24.75 18.18

Inspect 2 2