Manufacturing Systems Analysis, KPIs, and Plant Layouts

This report provides a comprehensive overview of manufacturing systems, encompassing key performance indicators (KPIs), plant layouts, and process improvement techniques. It begins with a review of manufacturing systems and KPIs, discussing their role in addressing competitiveness issues. The report then explores approaches for establishing performance measures at the shop floor level, including the Line Information System Architecture (LISA), and demonstrates their implementation to achieve corporate objectives. Product Flow Analysis (PFA) and Value Stream Mapping (VSM) are explained, with examples of their application in manufacturing companies. Different types of plant layouts are described, highlighting their benefits in relation to production varieties, volume, and economies of scale. The report also includes a critical review of various tools and techniques for process improvement within lean manufacturing systems and definitions of relevant acronyms. Finally, a case study on the performance assessment of a manufacturing plant is presented, offering a practical application of the concepts discussed.

Running head: MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS
Manufacturing Systems
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Part A...............................................................................................................................................2
Part B.............................................................................................................................................13
Case Study: Performance Assessment of Manufacturing Plant................................................13
Introduction............................................................................................................................13
1. Business and site information............................................................................................13
2. Opportunities and benefits.................................................................................................14
3. Performance assessment....................................................................................................14
4. Performance index.............................................................................................................15
5. Possible improvement options based on the key performance indicators (KPI’s)............15
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................16
Part C.............................................................................................................................................17
1. What are the main advantages of cell design compared to typical mass production system?
...................................................................................................................................................17
2. Briefly explain Kaizen and continuous improvement...........................................................18
References......................................................................................................................................19

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Part A
1. Provide a review of Manufacturing Systems and the Key Performance Indicators
(KPI’s). Give your views whether the developments in Manufacturing Systems have
addressed the competitiveness issues.
Review of the Manufacturing Systems: Manufacturing is the branch of industry that
involves the application of various tools and processes that deals with the transformation of the
acquired raw materials and turning it into finished products. It deals mostly with the industrial
and engineering designing organization. Manufacturing system is the collection of various
arrangements and processes that is used for manufacturing a specific product as per the
requirement of an organization and their clients (Mourtzis, Fotia and Vlachou 2016) The
manufacturing system works according to the arrangements of the organization and it also
includes the accommodation of all the disturbances and problems that might occur in the process
of manufacturing. This system accommodates all the controllable factors and the systems that
would counteract the problems that would occur in the system of manufacturing the specific
products as per the organization and the clients. The problem can occur both from the side of the
clients as well as the organizations performing the manufacturing process. However, the
problems should also have a solution within the system to counter them.
Review of Key Performance Indicators or KPIs: The Key Performance Indicators or
KPIs can be defined as the values that can be measured for an organization to understand if an
organization can achieve its business objectives and how effectively the organization is
achieving its business objectives. The organizations mostly use the Key Performance Indicators
or the KPIs in various layers within the operations of the organizations to check whether they

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have been successful in achieving their targets and how these are happening at these levels of
operations (Wang and Chien 2016). The organizations also use high levels of KPIs to assess the
overall performance of an organization and the low level KPIs are used for the assessment of the
different departments and the employees involved within them, such as the sales department, the
marketing departments and others.
Views on the Manufacturing Systems and KPIs in addressing the competitiveness
issues: The way that Manufacturing Systems work has the potential to understand that there
might be various troubles regarding the entire system running within the organization and there
can be issues regarding the potential threats within the organization (Nguyen 2018). I have gone
through the various processes that the manufacturing organizations go through and I have
understood that there are potential that during the entire there can be various issues occurring
within the system that can raise issues in the system further affecting the organizations.
However, reviewing the Manufacturing System of an organization and the implementation of the
processes to counter attack the problems in the various levels of the manufacturing process, I can
say that the way by which the organizations use the Manufacturing System in solving the
occurring problems while manufacturing the required product. This adds to solving the issues as
well as has a competitive advantage over the other organizations without having a Manufacturing
System for the turning of the raw materials into finished products.
As per my personal observation, KPIs also add up in delivering competitive advantage
for an organization as the chief performance assessment technique. This is the way by which the
performances in the organization can be justified to be fulfilling to the needs of the organization
and in case there is any lack in the operations of the organizations in fulfilling the requirements
of the organization, the KPIs can be used to assess the lack (Mourtzis et al. 2018). On the basis

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of this lack, further steps can be added to make sure that the necessary steps are being taken to
fulfil the lacks that have been witnessed in the system.
2. Describe an approach which can be used to establish performance measures at the shop
floor level (Product/batch) production. Also explain how these measures can be
implemented in manufacturing companies to achieve the corporate objectives.
There are various approaches that are used to establish the performance measures at the
shop floor level for the product or batch production. One such approach is the networking
machinery that enables the organizations to retrieve the necessary information from the modern
manufacturing systems used. It has been found that even after all these, there has been issues
found in the systems that makes most of the information remain unused (Theorin et al. 2017).
This problem ensued further creates problems to have gaps in the assessment of performances as
all the necessary information can be taken into consideration while making the decisions when it
comes to the context of managing the operations of the organization. The reason why this
approach is still not considered as a feasible one as the information is only regarded as valuable
only when the information can be used to support the achievement for a production objective.
To support this issue, there have been various other approaches developed that would
support the establishment of the performance measures for the product or batch production at the
shop floor level. The new approaches formed the linkage between the information right from its
origin to make the user consider them as important. The way in which these approaches would
become much more effective is that they would integrate the information in a comprehensive
way to improve the performance of the manufacturing system. When these approaches are
applied correctly the information is made available which could be utilised for measuring the
performances. Since these approaches enhance the performance measures and enable the system

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to access the success or the failure of any particular manufacturing system within the
organisation they are termed as feasible. The existing performance measures and the Framework
is a four stage based approach which mostly focuses on the utilisation of the information to
improve shop floor data development. The approaches are visible because they are tested with in
the industrial environment. This approach is known as Line Information System Architecture or
LISA. The overall goal of this system architecture for the approach was to improve the
production system in various parts of the manufacturing process and their discrete parts with the
help of investigating the line information system and improve the available information and their
usage using this system.
This approach also advances to the strategic management of the entire system so that the
goals and the strategy of the organisation asset including the way the manufacturing system
woodwork in achieving these goals. On the shop floor, the manufacturing operations are most
probably executed and the decisions are made according to the performance of the
manufacturing system. The entire decision about the manufacturing operation management is
possible to be done on the one hand in line including the overall strategy through this approach.
at the same time on the other hand it enables the performance optimisation of the entire
manufacturing system with respect to the methodology adopted for the production of the raw
materials into the finished products (Goto et al. 2016). In this way the line information system
architecture can be implemented within the manufacturing companies as the measures taken at
the shop floor level for product or batch production and achieving the corporate objectives at the
same time.

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3. Explain Product Flow Analysis (PFA) and Value Stream Mapping (VSM). Demonstrate
the use of PFA and VSM by giving examples of their implementation in manufacturing
companies.
Product Flow Analysis (PFA): Product flow analysis for production flow analysis is an
approach what a procedure that is utilised for the transformation of the entire functional layout
from being traditional functional layout to the layout mostly oriented towards the products. This
approach and method simply uses the path routing in order to find the natural clusters included in
the workstations to form the production cells that are mostly available for enabling the complete
parts as well as a components in a random manner and rapidly with the material flow becoming
much more simplified (Pinna et al. 2018). Once this method is implemented within a system, the
scheduling system becomes entirely dependent on the period batch control which aims to
establish the fixed planning, delivery cycles and production for the entire production unit.
Product flow analysis is mostly applied to the job shops having a functional layout which is only
after the reorganisation of the groups that the lead times become much reduced. The entire
quality becomes improved as well as the motivation within the personal starts improving as well.
Value Stream Mapping (VSM): Value stream mapping or VSM is a method or
approach for the lean management method that analyses the current state as well as the designing
of a future States for the entire series of event in order to reorder the product or service through
its entire journey of beginning through to the customers with has reduced clean waste as possible
compared to the recent maps (Feng et al. 2017). The value stream mainly focuses on the areas
where an organisation can increasingly add more value to a product or a service or a finished
material. On the other hand the value chain is referring to all the other activities within the
company. This method is utilised for identification and eradication of the reduced waste in value

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streams. The utilisation of this method increases the efficiency of a chosen value stream. This is
done to remove out of the intention of exponentially increasing the productivity and at the same
time create leaner operation that would in turn help in making waste as well as quality problem
that would be easier for identification.
Implementation in manufacturing companies: Traditionally, the product flow analysis
of PFA is applied mostly to the job shops that have various functional layouts. It is only that after
the reorganisation of troops leads to the reduction of time and improvement of quality as well as
they improves the motivation amongst the personnel. There have been various examples of the
implementation of product flow analysis of PFA that is not only applied to job shops and the
assembly operations but also at the back of a service and processes with practical cases (Saha,
Syamsunder and Chakraborty 2016). All these findings show that product flow analysis of PFA
has been effective in reducing the operations that do not add any value to the entire system and
also introduces the floor while removing all the bottlenecks and diminishing the variability of
products which further contributes to the operation management being much more efficient in
the manufacturing organisations. In the same way the value stream mapping utilizes various
supporting methods that the lean environments are happy to implement and the design flow
across multiple processes also implements this at the system level. although it has been reported
that value stream mapping is mostly associated with the idea of manufacturing but it can also be
used for supply chain, logistics, healthcare services related industries, product development,
software development and even administrative and office processes. When VSM has been
utilised in software engineering, it has been a success in that too as high level principle and
concrete practices can be related to the lean and agile software development.

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4. Describe the different types of plant layouts and show their benefits by giving examples
relevant to production varieties, production volume and economies of scale. 250
There are mainly three types of plant layouts. They would be described according to their
classification styles and their benefits by providing examples relevant to the production varieties,
production volume and economics of scale as follows:
Product or Line layout: The product has been standardized as well is produced in large
quantities for justifying the product layout. The advantages that are offered by product layout can
be manifold (Hirz and Ernst 2017). The provide the lowering of materials handling cost, lessens
the works in process, utilizes the men and machines better, occupies less floor areas by material
in transit for the for temporary storages, provide simplicity in controlling production and
minimising total production time.
Process or functional layout: Advantages of process layouts are that they help in
listening the duplication of machine and cost of equipment purchase thus gets reduced, much
more efficient supervision is characterized by process layout, flexibility in equipment and
manpower is increased, better utilisation of equipment is available, equipment breakdown can be
easily handled, and there would be a better control of precision processes when inspection would
be required (Shahbazi et al. 2018).
Fixed position layout: The advantages of fixed position layout is that it reduces the
material movement which further initiate the minimization of the capital investment, task is
handled by the gang of operators and therefore continuity of operation can be ensured
completely, it means the production centres be independent of each other with effective planning

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and loading, reduces the production cost and offers greater flexibility with the alliance of the
rapid changes within product design and production volume (Farias et al. 2015).
5. Provide a critical review and comparison of the various tools and techniques available
for process improvement within the scope of lean manufacturing systems. 500
For every small and medium size manufacturing organisation where creating a finished
product out of raw materials is the primary business operation adapting to lean methodology
forms an invaluable system that further paves the way for having a maximum output over a
minimum wastage during the entire production cycle (Katayama and Lee 2018). Lean
methodology maintains the efficiency of the tools and the following would that be a critical
review of the tools and techniques that are available for the process improvement within the
scope of the lean manufacturing systems:
Kaizen: Kaizen forms from a system that is a need of continuous improvement in the
particular areas where processes, company culture, technology, quality, productivity, leadership
and safety are important. This methodology or manufacturing tool suggest that each of the
employees at the various level of the organisation is eligible for making suggestions for further
improvement within the organisation (Hirayama and Nagasaka 2017). Although it may occur
that this suggestions might not lead the organisation to have a major change but over time there
can be small improvements made that would later add up to the leading of a significant reduction
for resources that might be wasted. The Japanese word Kaizen means continuous improvement
or having a positive change; thus, the companies applying lean manufacturing systems would
probably go for a philosophical approach that would premier at every aspect of the culture for the
company. The entire idea behind the approach or the tool is the elimination of creating waste.

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Kanban: This is a pull production system that is mostly design to eradicate the wastage
of inventory and overproduction. Mostly utilised during the time when assembly item begins to
learn law and employee trips that a visual reorder tool might trigger in the automatic reorder of
the inventory (Nordin and Belal 2017). This helps in the manufacturing process by making the
inventory usage being low and only reacting to whatever is required rather than making wrong
message about the order quantities.
Value Stream Mapping: Value Stream Mapping or VSM is a visual tool for the
organisation of the analysing, illustration and understanding of the material flow from a supplier
to the customer as well as the same information flow within the organisation (Bossi 2017). The
ultimate goal of this tool is to identify the information as well as the production bottlenecks
which can be easily eradicated with optimisation of the working hours, material cost and time.
Total Quality Management or TQM: This tool was first implemented by in the
Western electric company. The Total Quality Management or TQM is a comprehensive tool that
has an approach in the entire organisation to sit for the quality improvement of the products and
services within the procedures of the organisation (Dudin and Frolova 2015). The entire goal of
this tool is to refine and fine-tune the processes in the entire organisation in a continuous process
through the phases of the Deming Cycle. These phases are – plan, do, check and act or PDCA.
This tool emphasizes on the sustaining of customer satisfaction as well as possesses the
capability of completely streamlining the changes in which an organisation operates.
Jidoka: The idea of Jidoka is to design equipment that has the potential of partially
automating and will witness a halt whenever there is a detected defect. Whenever a human
worker would oversee an automatic process this tool will help in stopping the process and does
the human worker would intervene in solving the problem further (Mourtzis et al. 2018).

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6. Define the following acronyms:
CNC: Computer Numerical Control or CNC is the automated control of the tools used
for machining which are meant for a computer allowing a blank piece of material to be precise to
the specification allowed by the program instructing the manufacture without the use of a manual
operator (Tonelli et al. 2016).
CAD: CAD/CAM applications on the Computer aided manufacturing applications are
mostly used for the design and production as well as the program manufacturing of processes in
CNC machining.
BOM: BOM or manufacturing bill of materials is used in manufacturing organisation
during the manufacture of a product which contains the list of the used products, like the raw
materials, intermediate assemblies, sub-assemblies sub-components, parts and the quantities of
every raw material required for the manufacturing of the end product.
CAM: CAM applications on the Computer aided manufacturing applications are mostly
used for the design and production as well as the program manufacturing of processes in CNC
machining.
CAPP: CAPP or Computer aided process planning is the technology used to it the
process planning of a part of a product or an entire product in manufacturing.
AGV: An AGV all automated guided vehicle is a portable robot used for moving
materials and round in a manufacturing facility or a warehouse with the use of wires on floors,
vision, magnets or lasers for navigation.