Companys Production Operation Processes And Facility Layout

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

1.0 Introduction

Bena Jaya Metal Industry is located at Kampar, Perak. The main sub-sectors in Bena Jaya’s metal industry are aluminium smelting and hot rolling and the manufacture of route pipe and pipe joint. Bena Jaya Metal Industry is relatively old, the first firm having been established in 1978. The base metals industry started by manufacturing mainly aluminium, melt the aluminium into molten aluminium. Since 1978, Bena Jaya has been committed to providing high quality products at competitive prices. There is practically no limit to the types of aluminium products. Bena Jaya can help its customers create. The management of the company is always confident to make things happen in Bena Jaya because it has proven records on making the customers’ design into reality. Bena Jaya has been a major supplier of pipe joints to manufacturing industries since its humble start in year 1980. With more than 30 years of experience, Bena Jaya not only makes products for its customers and also makes reliable products for them. The company also enhances the competitiveness of aluminium industry to support the growth of the manufacturing sectors. The main purpose of Bena Jaya is to build quality into a product throughout production process. This would help to work consistently improve quality and productivity. Thus the company employs the experienced workers to ensure consistent quality standard and cost benefit to the customers. Besides that, Bena Jaya committed itself to on-time delivery the products. At the same time, the company also achieve this by managing an organization that is intergrated to the local networks.

2.0 Company’s Production/Operation Processes& Facility Layout

2.1 Production/Operation Processes

(i) Diagram of production processes flow (steps) & its descriptions.

Melting

Recycle Material

Die-casting Diagram of Process layout

Washing Product

Tapping screw hole

Clean up on machine

Packaging

Brushing

Tapping machine to make screw hole

The process steps of the company

Step 1: Bought the aluminum from the suppliers

Aluminium can be recycled over and over again without loss of properties. Therefore, the company buy the aluminum scrap form the supplier. Aluminum scrap such aluminum engine cover, aluminum wheel s, aluminium cans, radiators, old copper wires, metal plumbing fixtures are accepted by the company. The supplier will send the aluminum scrap to the factory by truck.

Step2: Melt aluminum by melting machine.

The factory worker will transport the scrap aluminum into the aluminum melting furnace for melt into molten aluminum. In this process are included melting the charge, refining the melt and adjusting the melt chemistry. The worker will export out the molten aluminum to pots which is ready to inject into the dies in the die casting machine. In detail, the molten aluminum is still contained in an open holding pot which is placed into a furnace, where it is melted to the necessary temperature.

Step 3: Transport molten metal into the die-casting machines.

Then a precise amount of molten metal is transported to the die-casting machines (cold-chamber machine) where it is fed into injection cylinder. There are two main types of die casting machines which are hot chamber machines and cold chamber machines. The company uses the cold chamber machines because it most suitable for die cast the aluminum product. The total cycle time of die-casting one product is very short, usually is between 2 seconds and 20second. The company having about seven die-casting machine which can produce variety types of product.

Step 4: Clean up the dirty thing (dust) that stuck on the machine.

Before proceed to die-casting next product. The workers have to use the air pump to blow out the dirty (aluminum) that stuck in the machine. This step is to protect the machines in well function that it could use longer in times. Furthermore, it also can make the machines performing well in die-casting the next product. It won’t make any mistake or error of the next product.

Step 5: Washing the joint

By this step, the workers transport the product to the washing machines to wash the dirty. This cleaning part is such as dry cleaning. It use to cleaning up the dirty that stuck in the product .The machines will spin out the dirty aluminium scrap and make out the model that user want.

Step 6: Using the tapping machine to make connection and

Proceed to this step; the worker will have to tapping the product to make a connection for the product can be used to connect with other existing piping. Otherwise, the worker also have to add some additional work to drill and tapping the screw hole that required form customer.

Step 7: All joint will throw into the Vibrating Machine

Before packaging the product, the product is still look dirty and dim. So, make it look new and shine. The worker will transport those products to the Vibrating Machine which is used to brushing and polishing, it can make a noticeable difference .This step can be simple say is to shining up the product . This machines is work together with water as opposed to dry cleaning

Step 8: Packaging into bags

Packaging is the last process step, Worker will packing the product into a plastic bag. The pack of each bag is between 500 and 1000 unit of products.The packages of the company is much easy to pick up and load up to the truck. The final product is ready for delivery.

(ii) Analyse and address the strengths and the weaknesses

Strengths:

The strengths that we found in the company are the company owned variety of machine that can produce variety of products rather than just one type. This company owned variety of machine that functions differently such as melting machine, die-casting machine, air pump machines, washing machines, tapping machines, vibrating machines and so on.

Therefore the company gives customer a larger optional and choice to select the types or pattern that they want. Company will produces the unique types of aluminium product that customer required but just accepted for larger amount order which 1000 units above. Another advantage to the company is reducing its risk on simply concentrating on one product. The company produces a variety of different ones of the same type.

Aluminium can be recycled over and over again without loss of properties. The company buy the scrap from the supplier at lower price because the scrap is mostly throwing by people and they dun wan of it. The company strength is saving their material cost because they are using the recycle product which is less expensive and using less energy intensive than creating a new aluminium material. The recycling of aluminium generally produces significant cost savings over the production of new aluminium even when the cost of collection, separation and recycling are taken into account.Hence the company reduce the cost that expense, it is possibly increasing the company sales and increase their net profit.

Weakness

This company might have few weaknesses is that worker will feel bored after long time doing the same job task and less skilled labour. For this company, the work task is quite repetitive for workers and it may cause lack of motivation for worker which leads to a poor quality and poor productivity. Another weakness that we founded is the working environment of factory was poor because the factory heat dispersing is unsatisfied. The factory just only provided ceiling fan and standing fan to reduce waste heat which produced by machines inside the factory. The workers were facing extremes of temperature as part of their daily work.

2.2 Facility Layout

(i) Diagram of Facility layout

Office

Aluminium cleaning Machines

Tapping Machines

Air Pump Machines

Vibrating Machines

Die-casting Machines

Aluminium melting Machines

Finished goods

Recycled materials

Symbols :

: Workers

: Machines

: Windows

: Doors

Facility Layout and Description

Facility layout is one of an important component of a business's overall operations that used in this factory. This layout is maximizing the effectiveness of the production process and satisfying the employee needs. The main objective of facility layout is to ensure a smooth flow of work and also some improvement for the materials or people and information through a system. The utilization of space, equipment and people in which a business's activities take place also found in this layout.

Aluminium melting machine is a kind of machine that melts all the recycle or unused aluminium. This machine is like a big iron pot. The surrounding of this machine is quite hot. This is one of the reasons why the aluminium melting machine put at the corner there. It is a reason can reduce damages to other unrelated workers and there are windows to make sure the whole factory’s temperature as usual. It also placed in front of door because once the aluminium arrive and put all onto floor and it brings lot of convenience to workers throw all aluminium into the aluminium melting machine. After process of melting the aluminium, all the molten aluminium will be move to the die- casting machine. Die-casting machine is placed beside the aluminium melting machine as a convenience to workers when carry the molten aluminium into die-casting machine. Air pump machine placed beside die-casting machine because it is used to clean the die-casting machine. After die-casting machines produce out a certain amount of joints, therefore there is come out some dirty or dust at the machine. Air pump machine is taken to clean the die-casting machines to make sure the continuous of processing is going smooth. Aluminium cleaning machine placed at the centre of the factory. After the aluminium joints produced, workers use the aluminium cleaning machine cleans all the aluminium joints. Next, all the cleaning aluminium joints send to the tapping machine which located beside the aluminium cleaning machine. It is a save time and easier way for all the workers tap the aluminium joints that make a connection for connect with other existing piping.

After tapping all the joints, workers take all joints and send to the vibrating machine for the next procedure. Vibrating machine is located between of tapping machine and also the store. Vibrating Machine a kind of machine that uses to brush and polish all the joints, it can make a noticeable difference. The last step is workers package the product into a plastic bag. The pack of each bag is around 500 until 1000 unit of products.

Advantages

Easier training and supervision

Machines are placed in sequence and easier for supervisor to check the procedures from one step to another step. The supervisor checks the joints to make sure all is up to quality and standardized. They will randomly pick some packages of the finished goods to check whether there’s any deficiency. If there is any deficiency, they will identify the error and correct the process.

Improve productivity

Due to the arrangement of the machines in sequence, there is a way to improve productivity of a factory. It is because the flow of materials is utilized in continuous way. Such as the aluminum melting machine is placed near the door it is because there is convenience to carry all the aluminum to melt in a faster way. There is save time for workers to walk from one machine to another one machine.

Disadvantages

Lack of flexibility of production rate

The procedures are following step by step will reduce the flexibility of the production rate. Without the step of melting aluminums, it is impossible to continue die-casting process. Workers also must follow the steps and cannot do as they like on their way. Workers also feel bored with their works because everyday do the same thing.

Work stoppage in any point ties up whole operation

The machines at either one of the steps break down, therefore there is cause a work stoppage. As an example, air pump machine is taken to clean the die-casting machines to make sure the continuous of processing is going smooth. If the air pump machines are break down, there is some problems occur in die-casting machine for next procedure. The workers cannot continue work and this is waste time and resources.

3.0 Study Area’s Literature Review & Contributions

New and flexible product development program is a systematic program that cause the business can stay ahead of the industry curve, compete in today’s fast-paced marketplace, increase productivity and grow stronger that yield high economic returns. Product development is a broad field of strive dealing with the product design, creation, and marketing of new products. Joe Bogue (2000) found that new and flexible product development is widely recognised as a key strategy for competitive success and the successful management of product development a key determinant of business performance.

Product development are the process modification of an existing product or formulation of an entirely new product that satisfies a newly defined customer want or market niche. However flexibility of product development denotes willingness and an ability of Bena Jaya Metal industry to accommodate requirement changes during the design process. Balasubramaniam Ramesh and Amrit Tiwana (1999) found that flexibility is important because the development of a new product naturally involves change from what have before new product design. Change can be anticipate in what the customer wants and how the customer might use the product, in how competitors might respond, and the new technologies being applied in the product or in manufacturing process. The more innovative a new product, the more likely it is that the development team will have to make changes during development.

It is important for the company to know the customer requirement. Urban and Hauser (1993) state that Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is one of the mechanisms that help organization identify and integrate consumer preferences into product design. It was a structured approach to defining customer needs or requirements and translating them into specific plans to produce products to meet those needs. Srinivas Adavikolanu and Raghu Korrapati( 2006) found that effective communication is critical to any business activity. However in the case of new product development as cross-functional teams are involved. The study of Ebadi & Utterback (1984) on the relation between communication and technological innovation indicates that frequent communication improves project success rates, while the formality in communication has negative impact. As we can know that customer-focused innovation and mass customization were innovation trends among leading manufacturers.

A planning tool such as QFD helps to describe product attributes desired by the customer at an early stage in product development. Semiconductor industry had been growing in a pace and face constant demand for products. These customer needs can be linked to product design to those working in new and flexible product development. In order to maintain their position in the market, Bena Jaya Metal industry needs to promise their customers, suppliers and employees with the services provided which is quality assure. Bena Jaya Metal industry had to allocating most of its revenue in the research and development to maintain its position in the market.

Bena Jaya Metal industry should providing rapid response to key capacity requirements and critical business needs, strong delivery performance and quality product. In order to maintain a good relationship with customers, delivery on schedule and products information visibility need to made available. In order to have a great effect on the customer, Bena Jaya Metal industry employees will need to be able skilled in operational, services and technology delivery. Apart from that, a good monitoring system will ensure that the product deliver on time with zero defects, nevertheless ensure that Bena Jaya Metal industry inventories is in a healthy state. Progressive improvement system such as employee suggestion system (ESS) or operator's advancement training program will ensure that the employees equipped with needed information for their job.

In addition to keeping up with competition and increasing productivity, an effective new product development process plays an important role in a company’s indirect communication with customers. Whether or not a company is producing new and innovative products tells the customers whether or not the company is responsive to their needs.

As the gradual development of business, firms are shifting form industrial systems driven by efficiency systems driven by quick response to customer demand for high product variety (Skinner, 1985; Doll and Vonderembse 1991). One way to build the capabilities of a firm to seek competitive advantages in a fast clock speed environment is through concurrent engineering practices to establish flexibility. Flexibility refers to an ability of a firm to respond to changing environment effectively (Gerwin 1993). Concurrent engineering is the early involvement of a cross-functional team to simultaneously plan product, process, and manufacturing activities (Hartley 1992). Concurrent engineering is the consideration of the factors associated with the life cycle of the product during the design phase. It was important because it is at the design stage that such aspects as product quality and cost are specified. Cross-functional teams can made improvement on time, quality, and manufacturability of new product design. Concurrent engineering practice is essential for responding to the specific customer requirement quickly, since modular product and process design is the key factor that a firm can possibly achieve customization in large volume at reasonable cost (Feitzinger and Lee, 1997).

Semiconductor industry had been considered as a high-technology industry by where the companies allocate a large sum of their revenue to research and development. The industry is recognized as a key driver for economic growth in recent years by where the development of new semiconductor products, manufacturing technologies and applications has lead to the development of other important industries, such as computers, telecommunications, and consumer electronics. According to Balasubramaniam Ramesh et al. (1999), there state that closes collaboration among these cross functional teams is essential for product success. Besides, cross functional knowledge is essential for the organizations that provide the communications services for the product knowledge about the operating system such as knowledge about the dimensions and features of competing products.

Companies are adopting new product development for gaining competitive advantage in the globalized markets. Products with better quality, lower costs, and shorter development time help to gain competitive advantage in the market. In the highly dynamic environment, markets can go through very huge changes during the stage of product development. Sufficient flexibility in a variety of processes enables the companies to incorporate required changes into the product and production processes without paying high penalty in terms of cost or time. Development of new product provides opportunity for high profits and also a high risk activity for the business organization. Companies should use flexible way in managing product development risks through well- coordinated efforts of various functions such as design, engineering, production, quality and marketing (Zahra et al, 1994). Flexibility is found to enhance both effectiveness and efficiency in innovation for product development projects (Davidson et al., 1999). Sushil (1993, 1994, 1997, 2000) has suggested use of managerial flexibility, which is characterized by three key aspects which are options, change and freedom of choice. Flexibility of product development refers to the ability of the company to change or react with little penalty in time, effort, cost or performance, with respect to the changes in the business environment, during the time of product development and the introduction to the market (Upton, 1994). It is important for company which operating in the highly dynamic market environment to have high standard of flexibility in the product development to ensure their market success (Iansiti 1995, Singh and Lewis 1997).

Besides that the companies adapt new product development, manufacturers of new products are also required to produce the product at a lower cost in order to ensure rapid and fast-moving items, and to be flexible with extensive and changing product diversity. The production technology and the process should flexibility that can fulfill the demand for responsiveness in the dynamic market environment (Collins and Schmenner, 1993). ).New product development projects using flexible design technologies out-perform the projects using in-flexible technologies (Thomke, 1997). Technology flexibility can reduce the incremental cost and time that required incorporating design modification in the product. It also can enable the company to gain competitive advantage. Moreover, company also use flexible method in selection of suppliers and employ some criteria for supplier-selection. It can provide competitive advantage for company without delaying product development to incorporate the new technology from the suppliers. Flexibility can be achieved both internally and externally. Important flexibility factors are modular product design, manufacturing technology flexibility, employee flexibility, and flexibility in the organization structure (Das and Elango, 1995). Development flexibility now become more important because of increasing the difficulties in forecasting the market competition as well as the changes in customers’ needs. Three key steps for improving developmental flexibility which are adopting flexible technologies, structuring processes to lower the cost of subsequent change as well as leveraging product architecture to enhance flexibility (Thomke and Reinertsen,1998).

Supplier involvement in the product development process has become part of integrated product development trend (Gerwin and Barrowman, 2002). Supplier involvement refers the extents of suppliers’ direct involvement in product development activities. The extent of supplier involvement can be determined by the frequency of design-related communication between the supplier and NPD team (Swink, 1999) and the extent to which suppliers influence decision making of product design (Wasti and Liker, 1999). According to Kenneth, he suggested as technology uncertainties present, suppliers are willing to share information with NPD team. So, it can be hypothesized that a company with higher clock speed will have higher level of supplier involvement in the product development activities. Suppliers’ knowledge and capacity can be viewed as the extended resources of a company. Supplier involvement brings some of the benefits in NPD which include enhance information and expertise regarding new technology or ideas, provide resources to achieve faster project time, being able to detect problems early so that reworks can be avoided and product quality can be improved, provide the possible route for outsourcing so that the project difficulty can be reduced, and improve the communication to avoid project delay (McIvor and Humphreys, 2004). It can help to enhance the product development flexibility in term of range, mobility, and uniformity. A company with higher level of supplier involvement in product development process will have higher level of product development flexibility.

According to Janez Benedičič, Roman Žavbi, Jože Duhovnik (2012) found that Development activities mostly focused on the upgrading of existing products, which also due to the shortage of know-how. Penetrating the market with a new product is much more difficult than marketing a fully developed product. Development of a completely new product would be more complex than upgrade an existing product. A newly developed product promotes growth for a company. Thus recognize the true opportunities are the key to success. An opportunity can rise from a new business direction, cost reductions, popularisation of operations, upgrading the existing products, new products platform, a new manufacturing process, new services or a new approach to retail and marketing service.

SETL opportunity search method developed by Duhovnik. The whole process describe that a company needs new products to defining project task for the implementation of individual opportunities. There are four steps, first step is the way to solve problems of the company by either a proper or improper choice of the opportunities search area for new products can significantly influence the company’s business operations and its future orientation. One of the methods is strategy; a company’s strategy can change on the basis of recognized opportunities. Second are resources, an analysis of available sources and their potentials are possible to assess the company’s capacities. This method takes into account of natural, human, organizational and technological resources. It is then follow by production; it is an existing production program and products, produced in the past, the size class of the produced products and type of production. Last is markets and channels of trade, it is very important when an area is being selected.

While second step in the STEL method involves intensive data and information gathering on a particular area based on four recognized influential factors. First factor is social, it involve demographic, social, environment, culture, fashion trend, free time and politics. Second is economy factor, it focus on size of the area, current and expected growth of the selected area, current and future purchasing power of user, added value of reference products, financial analysis of working processes, productivity and financial effect of related products. Third is technology factor, it is the technology used in working process. There are technology of working processes, technology of reference products manufacturing, technology of reference products application, patents, new, environmentally appropriate and use of natural resources. Last is legislative factor, it involve EU Regulations and directives, legislation of the state on whose markets we wish to present, rules and regulation, standards and legislation of the states that serve as a model to the state on whose markets we wish to present for example trends in the adoption of legislation.

Third step is eliminating the unsuitable opportunities according to the criteria and set together with the company’s management while last step is for opportunities restrictions and defined more precisely what data and information should serve as a basis for quality decisions on the potential of opportunities. For this step, it need to base on the opportunity carrier, users and their benefits, trends, competition, selling potential and the necessary resources.

Most important decision making phases for further product development process is ranking the opportunities. This is a very suitable guideline for further activities in subsequent development phases of the comprehensive product development process. It will cause large financial losses and bankruptcy for the company if a wrong decision is made.

According to Dubrovnik (2008) found that Product development and design process is carried out in several loops in a logical sequence. This process is by idea, image, task and request. Recognition of customer requirements is the most sensible and important process phase. The problem of direct transformation of customer needs into the goal appears but as a rule it is not possible because there are different knowledge and comprehension of the product and product development possibilities. The process is iterative which means that it is close in a loop. First loop is it needs to design the goal based on the tasks, requests and the needs of the customer. Second loop is it needs to provide definition of three design process, which are design level, design team and design work plan. Third loop is the specification of design requirements which are requirements for function, functionality, shape model, shape, manufacturing, cost, price, market and etc. Besides, it also needs to focus on the desires, general restrictions, regulations and laws. From here designers with have to design the product’s function and shape, based on social, economic, legal and culture properties. The idea will be presented for gaining expert opinion for making product improvement, and the result will be used in the N-th stage of manufacture in process development process.

According to Joze Duhovnik, Janez Kusar, Rok Tomazevic and Marko Starbek (2006) found that there are various methods to obtain the data on customer needs and wants. First is brainstorming method, there are four rules take into account while using this method. First rule is any criticism or evaluation of ideas is strictly forbidden. Second rule is ideas from other team members can be used. Third rule is teammate should use their imagination to solve problem. Last rule is ideas should be present in the shortest possible time.

Second method is focus group method; it usually is a group of customers who are discussing the questions posed by the moderator in a special room. Normally there will be six to twelve people with similar interest and knowledge in a group and each question last for two to three hours. The moderator can search reasons causing dissatisfaction and discuss the solution.

Third method is interview; it is gathering qualitative information between the interviewers and the interviewee through the conversation. The most common way to obtain what customers want is a conference room interview and which customer to be interview, venue to carry out and type of question must be selected. Contextual inquiry is carried out for better understanding of the weather, culture and values where the customers use the product.

Last method is a customer requirement which is obtained from the customer remark and complaint. It is an addition to the customer needs obtained by interviews and focus group. There are five steps to obtain customer complaint. First step is randomly retrieval a certain number of complaints from the database. Second step is translating complaints into positive expressions and concepts, which represent hidden needs of the customers, expressed by the complaint. Third step is remove duplication. Forth step is marking of each expression obtained from customer complaints while last step is combining customer complaints with the expressions obtained by other methods.

4.0 Discussion & Conclusion

The importance of company production processes which is to understand the concept of value stream and map the same before beginning to develop operational processes. The company’s production processes can be defined with the helps of inputs, outputs, sequential activity and an objective. Inputs are required by every process to perform work. It is important to understand that some inputs like men, money and material are approximately proportional to their usage. The objective of production processes is to ensure that resources are utilized in the most conservative manner possible. At the same time other inputs like knowledge ad information have little cost and can improve the efficiency of the process. Besides, another objective of production process is to reduce the amounts of inputs in order to bringing down the cost. For an organization to have an effective and efficient manufacturing unit, it is important that special attention is given to facility layout. Facility layout is an arrangement of different aspects of manufacturing in an appropriate manner as to achieve desired production results. Facility layout considers available space, final product, safety of users and facility and convenience of operations. With an effective facility layout, there is a smooth and steady flow of production material, equipment and manpower at minimum cost. The objective of facility layout is to design effective workflow as to make equipment and workers more productive. Facility layout should be able to provide an ideal relationship between raw materials, equipment, manpower and final product at minimal cost under safe and comfortable environment. A new product and flexible product development is important to tied to the ability of a business to remain competitive and also to the longevity of such a business. Any business that does not realize the importance of new product development will not last very long as a consequence of the fact that business is all about innovation and change, making it absolutely necessary for businesses to adapt to those changes in order to remain relevant. New and flexible product development may be geared toward the conceptualization of a new idea regarding a completely new line of products currently not in the market, or it could be aimed toward upgrading products that may be in the market already. In addition, the development of new and flexible products is an essential part of the application of business strategies by companies.

The workers suffering the problems of doing the same job task for a long time and feel bored. So we would like to suggest that the company should allow their workers having job rotation for every three month. Job rotation can helps worker to identify their skill, knowledge and also their work attitudes. In addition, this may help the company lead the worker having good motivation to work. Besides, the company should provide training programs for their workers in order to improve their performance. Training programs concerning the skills of listening, communication and emotion intelligence would be useful for the employees to fulfill the satisfaction of the customers. In order to improve the working environment of factory, we recommend that the company should use the local exhaust ventilation systems which can help directly remove the heat as possible in hot spots such as the melting section. Besides that, the company should recruit a supervisor to determine the number of workers to be handled and enable the supervisor to get a full view of the entire factory and take control over it. The facility layout will make the manufacturing function smooth and efficient. It will make the operation more efficiency such as economies in the cost of handling material and minimization of production delays. In addition, it is importance to reduce the manufacturing costs through reduced materials handling, reduced personnel and equipment requirements and reduced process inventory. Besides that, the company should improve the utilization of labor to increase the effective and efficiency of the production operations. The efficiency of a management relies in utilizing the time for productive purpose. An effective utilization of labor will makes the possible individual operations, the process and flow and material handling in a way that time of each worker is effectively spent on productive operations. As our conclusion, production processes and facility layout are important to operation factory. Techniques of production management are employed in service as well as in manufacturing industries. In manufacturing operations, production management includes responsibility for product and process design, planning and control issues involving capacity and quality, and organization and supervision of the workforce.