Case Study Beck Manufacturing Discussion

Read the “Beck Manufacturing” case study in Chapter 8 of your text. In a three- to four-page paper, address the following:Calculate the capacity of each machine center and the capacity of the system.
Analyze where the focus of the company’s efforts should be if Beck wants to expand capacity. Determine how much extra capacity he can get without causing another operation to become the bottleneck.
Suggest ways Beck can expand capacity without purchasing new equipment.
Your paper should be in paragraph form (avoid the use of bullet points) and supported with the concepts outlined in your text and additional scholarly sources.

Submit your three- to four-page paper (not including the title and reference pages). Your paper must be formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center and must cite at least three scholarly sources in addition to the textbook.

Case Study
Beck Manufacturing

Al Beck, president of Beck manufacturing, wants to determine the capacity of his facility, which produces steering gears for auto manufacturers. He has asked you to sort through the data and determine the capacity of the system and how that capacity may be increased. The operation is a product layout that produces large numbers of nearly identical products. The process includes milling, grinding, boring, drilling, and assembling, in that order. Each finished product requires one operation on each type of machine. For example, each finished part is processed on one of the five milling machines, one of the seven grinding machines, etc.

The facility runs two 8-hour shifts per day, with a third shift for maintenance. The industrial engineering department has provided you with the following data on present operations. In addition, you have been told that assembly operations, while not unlimited, can be easily changed to meet the need.

Operation Number of Machines Run Time per Piece (min.) % Reject Rate
Milling 5 2 3
Grinding 7 3 5
Boring 3 1 2
Drilling 6 2.5 7
Calculate the capacity of each machine center and the capacity of the system.
If Beck wants to expand capacity, where should he focus the company’s efforts? How much extra capacity can he get without causing another operation to become the bottleneck?
How may Mr. Beck expand capacity without purchasing new equipment? Be specific

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.