Microfix Inc Case Study

Microfix Inc. case was a fairly straightforward case study. There was product lines that Microfix Inc. currently had existing and they decided they wanted to expand their product line to be more encompassing.

Case Overview: Microfix Inc has decided to build a plug-in for their 256MB, the product requires twenty-five tasks in order to produce. Their problem with production stemmed from the marketing department setting a production goal of 60,000 units while management concluded that 52,000 units to start production would be a more realistic goal to meet. This brought forth the issue of making the product, and the concern of efficiency. With twenty five different steps in the line it is reasonable to have concerns about efficiency. There were various methods to discover the best possible way to balance the line. A method utilizing heuristics, is the method that we utilized and believe that it will yield the best results in terms of what would be the most efficient and reasonable goal for Microfix Inc. to meet. Factors to consider while utilizing this method include longest operation time, shortest operation time, fewest following tasks, ranked positional weight, and most following tasks. After much toiling and trial and error we yielded what we believe to be the most efficient number possible. To do this, we needed to know what the most time per workstation could be. Our calculations yielded 2.4 minutes. This was a primary constraint we used. This method we used by trial and error is called brute force. We confirmed this with programs available in the library.

Our Analysis: After our own analysis of the line, and tasks we came up with a strategy that yielded an efficiency of 84.72% and a balance delay of 15.28%. The total idle time was 4.4 minutes with this organization of steps. This was yielded with 12 workstations. While 11 is a theoretical possibility after seeing the complexity behind the line, we decided it would be more wise to stay away from the number of 60,000 and what efficiency would be required to maintain that. This is for two reasons; first, the vice-president did mention that Microfix. Inc would not be spreading itself further than the 40 hour work week. Second, the case said that a lot of the guesses were conjecture, meaning that they are based on knowing less than half of the information.  We interpreted this as there were numbers that could increase and slow down the line. Given we already are at a high level of constraints it was not a good idea to try to get to a number of 60,000 units per year.