Product design and supply chain

Question 1

How does the manufacturing environment look like, and how has it changed?

(Hint: think of TV’s)

Answer 1

Manufacturing environments

• Rapid changes
  
  • New products rapidly introduced
  • Short, unknown product life cycles
• High variety of products
• Long lead times (Offshore manufacturing)

––>

• Increasing storage and transportation costs
• Difficult to forecast demand

Question 2

What is Goals of the Manufacturing Organization?

What else is important to note about these goals?

Answer 2

–Competitive pricing
–Efficiency

vs.

–Responsiveness
–Customer service level

–> CONFLICTING GOALS

Question 3

Why do the goals conflict?

Answer 3

• • Forces for keeping low inventory
    
    • inventory is expensive
    • low salvage values
• Forces for keeping high inventory
  
  • long lead times
  • customer service level is important
  • demand is hard to predict
  • reduction in transportation quantity

Question 4

What does the Major supply chain costs include?

Answer 4

•transportation costs, inventory costs, distribution costs

Question 5

What are the
•Key Concepts of Design for Logistics and Manufacturing

Answer 5

–Economic packaging and transportation
–Concurrent/Parallel Processing
–Standardisation

Question 6

explain Economic Packaging and Transportation and give two examples

Answer 6

• Design products so that they can be efficiently packed and stored
• Design products to efficiently utilize retail space

IKEA
–World’s largest furniture retailer
–More than 349 stores in 43 countries (2014, Jan)
–Can sell 10,000+ in their shops
–Flat pack: compactly and efficiently packed products

Colgate (Retail Ready Packaging)

Question 7

What is the objective of Concurrent/ Parallel Processing?

How is this achieved?

What is the key to implementation?

Answer 7

• Objective is to minimize lead times
• Achieved by redesigning products so that several manufacturing steps can take place in parallel
• Modularity and decoupling is key to implementation
  
  • Decoupled components can be manufactured in parallel
  • Modifying existing components for decoupling can be expensive

Question 8

What is an example of Design for Logistics (Concurrent/ Parallel Processing?

Answer 8

Question 9

explain Design for Logistics and Manufacturing (Standardisation)

• (what types of standardisation)

Answer 9

• Standardisation of products and processes
  
  • Process commonality
  • Product commonality

–> Standardistion also reduce inventory levels and improve forecast accuracy

Standardisations with modular products and processes:

– Modular Product:

• Can be made by appropriately combining the different modules
• It entails providing customers a number of options for each module

– ModularProcess:

• Each product undergo a discrete set of operations making it possible to store inventory in semi-finished form
• Products differ from each other in terms of the subset of operations that are performed on them

Other types of standardisations:

– Part Standardisation

– ProcurementStandardisation

Question 10

What is a modular product and process?

Come of with an example of a modular product

Answer 10

• A modular product is a product assembled from a variety of modules such that for each module there are a number of options.
• Classic example of a modular product is the personal computer, which can be custimised by combining different video cards, hard drives, memory chips and so forth.
• A modular process is a manufacturing process consisting of discrete operations, so that inventory can be stored in partially manufactured form between operations.
  Products are differentiated by completing a different subset of operations during the manufacturing process. Observe that modular products are not neccessarily made of modular processes, as it may not be possible to store intermediaete, or semifinished inventores.

Question 11

Explain part standardisation

Answer 11

–Common parts are used across many processes
–Product redesign might be necessary

(IKEA furniture)

Question 12

Explain process standardisation (give an example)

Answer 12

–Standardizing as much of the process as possible, making a generic or family product

–Delaying differentiation

–Called “Delayed differentiation”, “Postponement”

Question 13

Explain postponement, and what is it part of?

Answer 13

Part of: Process standardisation

• Postponement: Key Concepts
  
  • Delay differentiation of products in the same family as late as possible
  • Enables the use of aggregate forecasts
  • Enables the delay of detailed forecasts
  • Reduces scrapped or obsolete inventory, increases customer service
  • May require new processes or product design with associated costs

Question 14

How to decide what kind of standardisation?

Answer 14