Question

You are one of the first engineers hired into the manufacturing engineering department at a brand new facility for producing aircraft engine controls. Your department is responsible for selecting, justifying, and installing all equipment for the factory. Most of the production equipment is being transferred up from the old facility in Fairfield, about a 3-hour drive away. The first production line has just been installed, and 8 more will be implemented over the next few months. When fully operational, approximately 700 production personnel will be employed on the factory floor. Most of your time is being spent on the shop floor learning about the equipment and trying to help with the installation process.

Right now most of the office cubicles are empty, but more people are being hired and transferring in from the main plant every week. Around 100 support personnel in operations management, quality engineering, manufacturing engineering, computer information systems, finance, purchasing, and human resources will have cubicle offices in a very large open area. Managers of each of the departments have already arrived. A separate design engineering liaison office will have approximately 20 personnel. The plant manager has a separate office suite.

Since the manufacturing engineering department is responsible for selecting and justifying all new equipment, it is being tasked with selecting and justifying the copy machines for the new office. For the transition period, two small copiers were purchased, one for the plant manager’s office and another for receiving inspection. A few small copy machines were rented and placed around the office area, but now a decision must be made on equipment for full plant operation.

The manufacturing engineering manager has selected you for this project. In giving you this assignment, she tells you that she understands that it is not a very exciting piece of equipment for your first justification project. She explains that the task is a very important one, and it will give you the opportunity to meet personnel in all the other departments. It will also help you learn the steps of the machine selection and implementation process. The phone rings about then, and the manager is called to the shop floor to decide what to do with a machine that was damaged in transit. As she leaves, she asks you to start talking to people about their needs and to outline the steps you think would need to be taken to get this project done. She says she will review the outline with you tomorrow.

You should consider the following in preparing your outline:

1. How would you find out what the needs are for copy machines?

2. What are the project’s objectives? Would different people in the office have

different objectives? Are any of these objectives conflicting?

3. How can you find out what type of equipment is available and what it costs? 4. What additional considerations would you have to make in deciding on

equipment and where to physically locate it?

5. How will you develop, evaluate, and compare alternatives?

6. Who do you think would have to approve your proposal?

7. How do you think an order would actually get placed for the equipment? 8. What steps might need to be taken before the equipment actually arrives to

prepare for installation?

9. When should you follow-up to see that the equipment is meeting the needs? 10. How do the defined steps fit into the framework of the engineering design

process? Where do the tools of an economic analysis fit in?

Answer 1

First of all i will analyse the different dept and try to understand what actually is needed within the dept. After that i will take meetings of each dept and will ask about the requirements and the things that are actually needed. For the things like copy machines it is not required for an individual so one or two copy machine per dept is essential rather than providing it to an individual separately. SImilarly for other things i will first analyze and come to the decision whether it is needed or not and look for an alternative . For the things i require , i will check the cheapest product available in the market and i will install it .

As there are different dept , the objectives will always be different and yes there will be conflict as well. For example: Quality engineers will focus on the quality of product , and sales and marketing dept will sell it. The aim of the sales and marketing will be tp convince consumer in any of the way and sell it to them . The conflicts here can be if sells are not done properly both dept will blame each other so this might be a conflict.

Some of the equipments like water cooler is must within the premises. It must be located in such place where it is easy for all to reach.

Before installation of the equipments notice telling everything that is going to be installed and at what place will be declared and anyone having problem and alternatives should come to me will be published.

i will take regular meetings to see the need of the company and will come to conclusion about the new equipments to be installed.