a) What are the information flows within the Donner factory.

Trace an order as it
moves from the originating customer to completion.

Process Analysis

Donner Company specialises in manufacturing the printed circuit boards (PCB) panels
required for electronics industry. The process of manufacturing is as follows.

1. Preparation Stage

In this step the master artwork is received from the customer which is used to generate a
negative image of the pattern. This raw material used in this process is double sided copper
clad glass epoxy sheets (48” x 36”). These sheets are sheared into eight panels (12” x 18”).
Location holes are punched in these sheets which will be later used for locating them on
various machining operations.

2. Image Transfer

The PCBs carries approximately 500 holes which are either drilled manually or on a CNC
high speed machine. In the drilling process via CNC machine the path traced by the tool is
numerically generated prior to the operation on diskettes depending upon the designs from
the customers. Post drilling the panel undergo a process called as metallization where a thin
copper layer is deposited in the holes which forms an electric connection between the two
surfaces of the panels.
Post metallization the panels are coated with dry film photoresist and are laid with customer
artwork. Then it is passed through UV light and developing machine which washes away the
film not exposed to UV light. The bare copper conductors are now electroplated with copper
film which is followed by a plating of tin over the copper plating

The film resist is then chemically stripped off the panel which exposes the copper that hasn’t
been previously electroplated. This copper layer is etched off by chemicals while the plated
tin protects the circuit pattern. In the final process the tin plating is stripped off giving us a
pattern of copper circuit on the panel.

3. Fabrication

The panels are processed via solder mask silk screening which applies a epoxy protective
coating over the circuit traces. The exposed copper holes are covered in solder metal by
dipping the panels in solder bath. The circuit boards are then profiled according to the sizes
required either on a stamping machine or CNC machine. The final step involves inspecting
and packaging the boards according to the standards specified by the customers.

Problems prevailing in Donner’s Company:

Concerns in the production process stage:

The most concerning issue in the production stage was the problem of variably changing
bottleneck in the whole system.

Attributable causes:

 Nature of client order which leads to change in product specifications each time a new
order is received.
 Prioritising some of the special orders which causes normal process flow to be
disturbed.
 Many times unnecessarily delays are accounted for due to inefficient management and
procuring system of raw materials.

Concerns in overall productivity:

Attributable causes:

 Machines are not fully utilised, and they are laying idle, also as the defined running
hours are not correct.
 The time estimated of the processes are higher than the competitors and is not
optimised.
Concerns in deliveries to Customers
The company is finding it difficult to adhere to the delivery timelines.

Attributable Cause:
Donner Company has the policy of clearing the orders by the end of each month in which
they are received. It has led to increase in number of deliveries in the second half of the
month.

Loss of Revenues
The cascading of all problems is having a serious impact on the way Donner company is
fulfilling its orders and the prevalent quality levels. The present processes will restrict the
company to increase its revenues beyond the current $2 million sales the company earned.

b) How should Donner make choices for use of alternative technologies? Using this logic
decide what orders should Donner schedule on the CNC drill and on the CNC router.

Few of the processes in the manufacturing system have alternative technologies which can be
harnessed. For instance, the drilling mechanism can be done either manually or automatically
on a CNC high speed drill. In a similar way during the fabrication process, the circuit boards
are separated from the panel and reduced to its finished profile through either a CNC router
or by stamping on a 20-ton punch press. For the processes that are automated, the computer
control is prepared beforehand from the customer’s artwork. This adds to the activity setup
time and can decrease the process capacity. Thus, there is always a choice to be made among
various alternatives for different batch sizes. This dilemma should be resolved by analysing
the time taken on using a particular technology for a various batch size.

We shall use the above logic for our analysis as follows:

CASE 1: When to use the CNC drill

We will use the CNC drill only when it takes lesser time than manual drilling.

Assuming a constant order size of N:

Technology/Time taken Setup Run (per hole)

CNC Drill 240 0.004

Manual Drill 15 0.08

 240 + N*0.004*500 < 15 + N*0.08*500

Thus, if the order size is greater than 6 then CNC drill must be used otherwise Manual drill
will be faster and efficient.

CASE 2: When to use the CNC router

We will use the CNC Router only when it takes lesser time than Punch Press.

Assuming a constant order size of N:

Technology/Time taken Setup Run (per circuit board)

CNC Router 150 0.5

Punch Press 50 1

Time taken for CNC Router < Time taken for Punch Press

 150 + N*0.5 < 50 + N*1

Thus, if the order size is greater than 200 then CNC Router must be used otherwise Punch
Press will be faster and efficient.
c) What is the standard labour time for an order of 1 board? 8 boards? 200 boards?

Time Taken for 1 board: 6.389 hours

Time Taken for 8 boards: 11.568 hours

Time Taken for 200 boards: 30.671 hours

 The bottleneck of the process is not constant and keeps changing, as each operation had
different workload in every order.

RECOMMENDATION

Analysis of the daily progress report showed that the delay in scheduling occurred due to
missing supplies, for this they could keep an inventory. The stock of the inventory could be
estimated on the materials required by different orders. According to exhibit 4, the inventory
of base stock A should be higher.

 The difference in workload at each operation, resulted in increased production at one

RECOMMENDATION

There could be separate production lines to cater to small and large orders. From exhibit 4,
we see that more than 78% of the circuit boards produced are in the order size greater than
200.

 There was frequent rescheduling of workers which resulted in confusion. This was due to
variability of the amount of time each operation took for small and large orders.

RECOMMENDATION

Creating separate production lines, would help estimate better the labour required and hence
lesser rescheduling would occur.

 The company was not able to meet the delivery deadlines and had higher time estimates
than competitors

RECOMMENDATION

For the order size above 200, using CNC router is efficient than punch press and the company
will save time. Similarly, using CNC drill for order size greater than 6 will be more efficient
when compared to manual drilling.