Incredible Growth of Automotive Industry

Abstract

Nowadays, automotive industry and related business face a high-level of competition, especially in supply business for smelters. Nonetheless, the supply business for smelter can respond to the competitive landscape with product improvement. This project proposed to improve the shelf life of Refractory Mullite by using Design of Experiment. Firstly, Factorial Design was conducted to find out the significant factors. After that, using the general factorial design and the response surface methodology brought about an appropriate level of each factor. It was found that the response surface method suggested a new formula that could dramatically increase the moisture content which determines the shelf life of the Refractory Mullite product. Based on the result, supply business companies could systematically apply Design of Experiment to faster the process for future product improvements.

Introduction

        The incredible growth of automotive industry has led to a high competition in the mold parts industry. In order to sustain their competitiveness in the market, a case-study factory needs to develop its Refractory Mullite product.

The case-study is licensed to manufacture the Refractory Mullite. It is used in furnaces and socket maintenance by patching the cracks. One of the important qualities that customer desires is long-lasting softness. However, the case-study has not been able to retain this desired quality. Thus, this project aims to extend the Refractory Mullite’s storage life and freshness.

[pic 1]

Fig. 1: The usable Refractory Mullite

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Fig. 2: The unusable Refractory Mullite

Methods

        After the problem was analyzed by consulting with the production manager and QC manager, the conclusion was that there are following factors that may affect storage life of the product:

1. Manufacturing process: The case-study factory strictly follows the standard manufacturing instructions and there are engineers controlling every step. So, this factor does not affect to Refractory Mullite’s storage life.
2. Raw material: This product has main materials and binders. As for the main material, the case-study factory cannot supply main raw materials that meets the specifications but they can supply substitute main raw material and adjust them into the range of standard of formula. Whilst, the case-study factory can supply substitute binder but cannot adjust them into the range of standard of formula.
3. Packaging: The packaging used in licensor’s factory and case-study factory are different. However, previous study showed that the products in two types of packaging after 1-month storage were not different.
4. Storage environment: The case-study factory bought finished product from the licensor and stored in the same environment with case-study’s product. It turned out the licensor’s product was usable but case-study’s product was unusable.

From the information, it is shown that substitute binders could be the factor contributing to ability of the product to retain its long-lasting softness. Accordingly, it became the factor of interest.

So, we chose 4 binders namely High O Acid, CD191, High Z Acid and Big G to conduct the experiments.