AIC Netbooks Optimizing Product Assembly Case Solution

1. How efficient is netbook assembly at the Kaizhi plant?

a. What is the monthly output of the plant?

To determine the monthly output, the cycle time of 50 second per units is used. For the production of the notebook, there are four assembly lines and 2 shifts of 8 working hours. For calculations, it is assumed that there are 25 working days. Exhibit 1 shows the calculations for the monthly output of the plant in the current situation. The monthly production of netbooks would be around 115200 units.

b. What is the theoretical efficiency of the planned line, looking only at direct labor on the assembly line?

Looking only at the planned operations of the direct labor at the assembly line it is obvious that the actual operation is taking more time than the planned one. The planned time per station on one unit is nearly 40 seconds for all stations. On average, the theoretical time taken per station is around 39.6 seconds.

c. What is the actual efficiency of the assembly line?

The average actual time taken by workers on each station to work on one unit in the assembly line is 44.3 seconds. Exhibit 2 shows the comparison between the planned and actual time of operations. The difference in the planned and actual time at each work station helps determine the bottlenecks. As stations 2, 6, 7 and 9 all take more than 15% time these are identified as the bottlenecks.

Furthermore, the planned worker per work station is one. However, there are more than one workers working in a station. It seems that because workers are helping each other, more than one worker is working in one work station. Rather than 10 workers in 10 stations as planned, there are 12 workers in 10 stations. This shows that the efficiency is very low. Despite, on average, more than one worker per station the time taken to finish the task on work stations is greater.

2. How effective is the current operation?

a. What are the right criteria by which to evaluate it?

The criteria by which to evaluate the current operation is first to examine the planned operations. It is important to note if the planned operations are not idealistic. If the planned operations are not realistic, it will set unreasonable goals for the workers which they would not be able to fulfill. Secondly, it is important to compare the actual operations with the planned one. It is obvious that the current operation is not effective because some non-standard operations have also taking place on the assembly line like the webcam requiring additional glue to be secured into the cover assembly frame.

b. Is the operation designed appropriately to meet demand?

Yes, the operation is designed to meet the demand i.e. 130,000 Netbooks a month. Exhibit 3 shows that the operation is designed to produce as much as 144,000 units if each station takes nearly 40 seconds. However, there are bottlenecks at stations 2, 6, 7 and 9, which means that the operations might not be designed appropriately. The manager should re-evaluate the operation design and try to remove bottlenecks to improve the cycle time.
Hence, due to the existence of bottlenecks and problems with the operational designs, the current operation seems ineffective.