Hg and Lg Products

The core issues we have identified are that the HG products are slowing down to the conveyor production and hence making the LG products slower to produce finished goods. The line speeds of the LG HG product vary from 15 feet/minute to 12 feet/minute. In this case, the mix of HG and LG bumpers will run on the conveyor line together, and the HG bumpers will slow down the speed of the LG bumpers. This problem adversely affects the productivity and efficiency of the company and will delay lead time.

Also we have identified issues associated with the quality of the HG and LG products, and this has led to defect rates that need to be reduced and addressed at the same time. "The primary sources of rejections are: dirt and dust in the manual hand sprayers, old equipment and the nature of the industry".

Another issue is that the production process consists of combination of shape, size, colour and type of coating which generate complexity and chaos for PPS.

1.2 Recommendations

1.2.1 New Technology

As most of the issues associated with defects are caused by the manual hand sprayers in the production process we can reduce this amount by employing an automated spraying mechanism which wouldn't allow for human error to put dirt or dust onto the products as they go through the conveyor line. The issue here is that the manual hand sprayers accumulate dust or dirt when being used and affect the products accordingly. By employing this new technology and ensuring that controls are put into place so that dust and dirt cannot get into the production line PPS should be able to ensure that their defect rates are lowered or even eliminated. Whilst it may be impossible to reduce defect rates altogether, this improvement should reduce the rate of defects by quite an amount as this is the core issue creating defects amongst both HG and LG products. Whilst the company will have to make another capital outlay to accommodate for this new technology in the production line, it is of our belief that the benefits will be long-term as PPS should see a superior production process than the one currently being used.

1.2.2 Production Line

At the moment the HG and LG products work along the same conveyor line whilst the HG products take longer to process and hence slow down the LG production. We recommend that the company separate the product lines between the two; this would lead to an increase in costs in the short term as an outlay would need to be made to create a new production line.