Case: Circuit Board Fabricators, Inc.

Case: Circuit Board Fabricators, Inc. What type of process flow structure is CBF using? The company is using a batch shop process flow structure. CBF, Inc. bases its board fabrication process on the average job size or on its typical order. This means that the company proceeds with the manufacturing process in batches so as to meet the specific requirements per order. The typical contract that the company currently gets is 60 boards per order. However, due to persisting factory defects, they manufacture a total of 75 boards per batch in order to compensate for 20% of the boards that they typically reject during the process. Diagram the process in a manner similar to Exhibit 6. 7 We don’t have this Exhibit in our Handouts Analyze the capacity of the process The capacity of the flow process is at an imbalance. There is a significant amount of manual labor in this flow process in which human error must be taken into consideration. It appears that some of the stations may be run by an inefficient amount of operators. Lastly, with 6 employees on 6 machines for the final inspection, the end of the process should not take as long as it does. What is the impact of losses in the process in Inspection and Final Test? The impact of the losses in the system is quite extensive. It is stated that 15% of the board are typically rejected during an early processing inspection along with an additional 5% rejected during the final testing. This results in a production order increase of 25%. Ultimately, the first inspection should not be a bottleneck of this process and there should not be any rejected boards in the final inspection.