Close-up of multiple identical gray plastic parts lined up, freshly molded in injection molding process.

Introduction

For your final project, you will prepare a report for the plant manager who posed the original challenge. Your goal is to deliver clear, data-driven insights and actionable recommendations. Use the provided dataset and apply your course skills to analyze the data. Identify key patterns or issues using any software you prefer. Present your findings using visuals, tables, and brief, focused writing. Tailor your message to the plant manager and recommend a course of action that supports informed decision-making.

Objectives

Instructions

Scenario:

Your plant manager was told by the VP of Operations that the OEE for your plant is at 76.8%. The VP would like a plan for how you location is going to improve OEE to be above 85% like the other 5 plants in the region. Your plant manager has assigned you to confirm the OEE reported by the VP and propose changes that will increase OEE above. Additionally, in the last two months your plant has been operating on Saturdays to keep up with orders. Production team members are exhausted and want to get back to a 5-day work week. Your plant manager would like you to asses this problem and propose a solution.

 

   Process and Equipment Information  
 

The factory is outfitted with 3 different injection mold machines. Each machine is constantly supplied with resin beads from a hopper. Plastic parts are ejected from the injection machines onto a conveyor belt that carries the parts to the packaging machines. Each injector has a packaging machine in the line configuration and each packer can process 2.1 lbs of parts per minute.

 

An injector molding machine typically has a life span of 10-20 years. Injector I-200 was purchased 2 years ago for $365k. Injector I-206 was purchased 5 years ago and Injector I-205 was purchased over 15 years ago. You recently contacted the manufacturer of I-200 and they can sell the same model of injector for the same price and you can expect to get the same performance.

 

Each injector is scheduled to run 22hrs a day, 5 days a week. 2 hours a day are set aside for scheduled downtime to account for maintenance, breaks and shift turnover. Downtime on average cost $12k/hr and scrap on average cost $8/lb of parts.

 

The weekly production needs on average are as follows:

  • Product ID 104-4728 requires 2500lbs/week
  • Product ID 104-4729 requires 2525lbs/week
  • Product ID 104-4730 requires 2550lbs/week
  • Product ID 104-4731 requires 2530lbs/week
  • Product ID 104-4732 requires 2530lbs/week

 

 

 

Process Data

 

Machine Data

 

Report:

Report Structure

For your written report, you will be communicating your data findings. As a general reminder, your report should be formatted to include the following sections:

 

Report Elements

Prepare a report that contains the following elements.

  1. A current state of the factory and its capacities.
  2. Any relevant KPIs.
  3. Downtime and Quality reports utilizing the Pareto Principle.
  4. An assessment of the maintenance metrics for each injector and recommendations.
  5. A proposal of how to ensure order fulfillment, include a future state map, ROI analysis any estimated improvements to KPIs.

 

Note

Length is not as important as substance. If you have completely answered the questions proposed, you will not be graded or docked for length.

 

Submit

You will turn in a report, Excel or Power Bi files, and submit the code that you used to get your answers as a separate file along with your report