Case Summary
Circuit Board Fabricators, Inc. is a small manufacturer of circuit boards located in California. (Chase, Jacobs, and Aquilano, 2004) Large computer companies such as Apple and Hewlett-Packard hire Circuit Board Fabricators to "make boards for prototypes of new products." (Chase, et al., 2004) The case study suggests that Circuit Board Fabricators has a good business plan established within the organization. CBF has implemented a largely automated process using industry standard codes to produce the four circuit boards that have been developed to be able to give quick and high quality service.
There have been recent losses experienced by CBF, due to the system that is currently in place. The policy has changed and all
Question #5: What recommendations would you make for a short-term solution to CBF's problems? A short-term solution may be to extend the work day so that 8 production hours are optimized during a 5 working day week. If this solution produces results, then this could be a possible long-term solution. Another possible production hour solution would be to incorporate 4 10-hour working days. Again, the number of boards produced would quickly determine if this is indeed a long-term solution.

Question #6: What long-term recommendations would you make? One of the most important recommendations would be to add another machine or two throughout the process, especially at the beginning of the board fabrication. Another long-term recommendation would be to take into consideration where more automation could be used in place of human manual work. This would decrease the amount of waste, therefore, decrease the percentage of increase of the size of order, in turn, shortening the overall time of the entire job shop process flow. Reduction of the main bottleneck, the initial inspection time duration will seriously increase the overall production of the boards within the facility to meet the 1,000 per day goal.

Identify the top three process improvement opportunities

As examined, the top three process improvement opportunities include:
1. A change in the total amount of hours worked by the employees (either extend ½ hour per five