IV: Factory Design

Initial Layout Proposal

Given our production target of 1,000,000 yo-yos of the same exact design, our manufacturing type is repetitive and continuous. Our product and processes are best suited for a product layout type, as opposed to process layout or fixed position layout. In our product layout below, each sub-assembly has its own product flow line where various operations on raw material are performed in a sequence, starting from the stock room on the left. The parallel lines are joined at assembly points, and any necessary operations after assembly continue down a joined flow line until the final product is placed in the store room at the right side:

Each box color corresponds to the color of each part, for clarity. The red arrows indicate quality control checkpoints, where defective parts that do not meet specifications on the critical fit areas or have otherwise cosmetic defects are thrown out. The small yellow triangles indicate batch processing occurs at that step, where multiple parts are made at once. Finally, the black drops represent worker placement and white bubbles represent approximated cycle time for each operation.

For the sake of our factory design for 1,000,000 yo-yos, we need some kind of packaging to protect and sell our yo-yo. We decided to go with a simple thermoformed clear packaging that secures the yo-yo during shipping and handling, which is sealed by a cardboard backing that would include product marketing information, such as the name, the age range, any choking hazard warnings, and more. Due to our limited time and scope for this class, we will not be designing the packaging parts, but we have included them in the factory layout.

For more detail about our factory proposal, check out our Go-To-Manufacturing Report here.

Factory Simulation Iterations

Iteration 1

We removed the packaging lines (those would be outsourced) and put our intial proposal into Siemens Tecnomatix Plant Simulation. We have two huge bottlenecks, as they are 100% working below: AssyFloatie and Thermoformer. We would be able to make 768,690 yo-yo's a year, which is below our target of 1 million...

Iteration 2

To address the floatie assembly, we added two assembly stations in parallel. Throughput was increased to 1,183,523 yo-yo's a year. Now, we see that AssyFull and Thermoformer stations are our main bottlenecks.

Final Iteration

Finally, we converted the thermoforming machine to a parallel station, so it would be a two-part mold. This design is also adaptable to a 50% increase in demand. By adding two more parallel AssyFull stations (the last assembly step), effectively meaning adding two more workers at the last step, the simulation shows we can make 1,562,594 yo-yo's in a year.

Factory Summary

We have designed a factory that is robust to variations, cost-efficient, and flexible in adapting to varying demand levels.