Circuit Board Fabricators
Issue Identification
Circuit Board Fabricators, Inc. (CBF) is a small manufacturer of circuit boards located in California. Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard use this company to make boards for prototypes of new products. CBFs aims to quickly provide very high-quality service and has developed a good business plan. CBF produces four standard size board configurations and has automated much of its CBFs board fabrication process for making these standard boards. A typical circuit board order consists of 60 boards. Due to losses in the system, CBF has implemented a policy to increase the size of its orders by 25 percent. The CBF plant was originally designed to run 1,000 boards per day when running a five day weekly or eight-hour per day shift. However, capacity on a good day only produces approximately 700 boards (Jacobs & Chase, 2011). To mitigate the risk of continuing this negative trend, this paper will review the steps involved in CBFs board fabrication process, to identify areas that can be eliminated, combined, automated or improved to yield optimal production and greater efficiencies.
Frame Work
CBF uses a job shop process flow structure and by analyzing the data concerning CBFs fabrication ordering process, it is obvious that the companys capacity is less than required to meet the demands of their customers. It this problem is not resolved quickly, CBF runs the chance of damaging their companys image, losing preferred customers, and losing advantage to its competitors (Jacobs & Chase, 2011).
Required Output per shift
Average Job Size (boards)
Production hours per day
Working Days per Week
Process/Machine
Number of Machines
Number of Employees
Setup Time
(min. per job)
Run Time
(min. per part)
Average Size of Job (boards)
Operation time per order
Capacity per day (jobs)
75.00
29.75
15.13
Clean
75.00
37.50
12.00
75.00
37.50
12.00
Unload
75.00
24.75
18.18
Expose
75.00
144.00
15.63
75.00
29.75
15.13
Develop
75.00
24.75
18.18
Inspect