Learning from a Classroom Manufacturing Exercise - CiteSeerX

Vol. 11, No. 2, January 2011, pp. 77–89 issn 1532-0545 11 1102 0077

informs

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doi 10.1287/ited.1100.0057 © 2011 INFORMS

I N F O R M S Transactions on Education

Learning from a Classroom Manufacturing Exercise Irwin Gray

School of Management, New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, New York 11568, [email protected]

B

y performing a hands-on manufacture of a paper product along a fabrication line set up in a classroom, students experience the complexities of an actual production line—how to work with people to construct a smoothly flowing line and analyze and deal with technical changes. In particular, they learn how a change in one position on the line affects the manpower, methods, and machines of the entire line. The quantitative as well as qualitative problems of batch processing, work-in-progress inventory, misutilization of labor, and even elements of product liability become “live concepts” instead of dry exercises from a book. Students in an MBA program with no real-life experiences against which to reflect what they are learning in their classes are able to experience a working fabrication line in all its complexities. They are challenged by having to design their own products and the jigs and fixtures to make them—even when they have no engineering or specialized knowledge. One group, for example, manages to design a production jig for a folding step that other groups have been doing by hand; the jig enables a 57% improvement in production per labor minute. The exercises also demonstrate the costs of idle time: When a batch process is mishandled, worker idle time jumps to 19% of the total time needed to run the batch. This exercise prepares students for future job decisions involving production problems of in-house manufacturing or service operations, off-shore procurement, and quality control. Key words: experiential learning; manufacturing complexities; developing critical thinking; active learning; teaching production/operations management; teaching with projects; hands-on learning; factory simulation History: Received: August 2009; accepted: July 2010.

over 1,800 MBA students in my operations management course. Few of the students had even minimal exposure during their lifetimes to tools, tooling, or even rudimentary fabrication efforts. Once they are involved with this project, they realize it will help them compensate somewhat for their lack of production experience and they embrace it with a great deal of enthusiasm. It is a very effective instructional exercise that has benefitted even those who completely missed the chance to exploit their applicable windows of development. I now relate the story of Bob. During my undergraduate summers, I worked as a plumber for my father—a contractor participating in a federal program to refurbish small apartment houses. As part of the contract, the firm had to hire young men from disadvantaged backgrounds and train them to the minimal levels that would qualify them for plumbing union apprenticeships. Bob, a 20-year-old, was assigned to me as a “plumber’s helper” to install bathroom wash basins and faucets. At the time, hot and cold water faucets were separate and each time I tried to secure one of the faucets in place, the whole faucet turned from its set position when I tightened the bottom nut. At one point I called to Bob, “Tape up a wrench’s jaws so you don’t scratch the chrome,

I hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understand (Confucius, circa 500 B.C.)

With the advent of powerful computer simulations, some of the instruction in every activity from surgical procedures to running a business is delegated to learning through a computer display—touted as 21st century learning. However, there is a considerable amount of experience and research that argues for retention and even growth in the importance of teaching via old-fashioned hands-on manipulation of actual components and real people interacting on common projects. It develops the kind of knowledge that is sometimes called “street smarts.” When this development does not take place at appropriate periods in life for various skills or abilities, it has lifelong (and often damaging) effects. When a career choice calls for the use of those underdeveloped skills, the individuals who fail to remedy their deficiencies (by training or education) will tend to perform at lower levels than they might otherwise have reached. This paper is about a classroom manufacturing exercise that I have taught for more than 20 years to 77

78 grab the faucet, and when I say ‘pull,’ turn it clockwise to straighten it out when it moves as I tighten the nut below.” I then yelled “pull” and he pulled on his wrench; the faucet twisted almost 90 and made a pretzel of the tubing underneath the basin. I moved out from under the basin and looked up—Bob had an 18-inch heavy-duty pipe wrench in his hand! Those faucets came with little glass beads with C’s or H’s on them. A gentle tap seated the bead into the top of the valve handle. “Bob,” I told him, “get a hammer, tape up the front of the head, and very gently tap the beads into the valves.” I left the bathroom to speak to the foreman a few feet away—at which point we heard a loud “pop!” followed by a string of curses from the bathroom. Then, we heard another loud “pop!” and a repeat of curses. Bob was using a taped-up 10-pound ball peen hammer. Those beads exploded into dust with even the lightest tap from the hammer. What happened? Bob had no concept of what torque was and the forces it could exert on a small faucet— the size of a wrench and the torque needed for our little faucets were totally beyond his cognizance. This was likewise for associating the mass of a hammer and its effect on a glass bead (even with a gentle tap). His life experiences thus far had involved only a slight acquaintance with hand tools. Lack of hands-on exposure to tools at an early age damaged Bob’s career as an adult. As was true of so many others in the apprenticeship program, he never had success with classroom work; getting him interested in classes at his age to overcome his developmental deficiencies was impossible. (On-the-job training proved to be insufficient— few of the recruited young men were admitted to any of the apprenticeship programs.) What was true for Bob in plumbing remains equally true for individuals in many careers—from those requiring a rigorous formal internship such as in medicine to internships in business. Those who miss the experiential learning that would have developed certain age-appropriate skills and background do not have the groundwork for absorption of many aspects of later classroom concepts or the ability to exercise, at higher effectiveness levels, whatever they did learn in the real world. As a young doctor explained to me, “Without the experience of cutting into a cadaver, I could never have developed the skills of cutting into a living, breathing individual who expects to get off my operating table in better condition than when he got on it.” It is a long conceptual step from the learning of medicine to that of management, but the reality aspect is not. The lack of applicable experience at an early age will hurt the undergraduate management student. The lack of work experience will damage learning at the MBA level—the one with which I am concerned. Numerous academic studies

Gray: Learning from a Classroom Manufacturing Exercise

INFORMS Transactions on Education 11(2), pp. 77–89, © 2011 INFORMS

have been done from the earliest stages of children’s schooling to the internal research done by MBA-level college admission officers. They support the need for appropriate experiences to make the formal education process at each level more successful for students. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In the next section, I survey related literature and in the third section, I discuss the use of the project in an MBA program and how it will help students in their future careers. Following that, I present details on the format of the project and then describe my experiences with its execution. In the sixth and seventh sections, I cover the benefits expected from the project and the important learning elements derived therefrom. Finally, in the last two sections, I present my conclusions and suggestions for future research.

Experiential Learning in the Literature

The need for experiential learning is demonstrated by measuring the achievement of children as young as six years of age (Hernandez 2009). English tests for city children in third grade include questions relating to chickens and eggs; in math, they count sheep and horses. Rural children are asked to calculate how long it takes to run around a city block. They are, essentially, being asked to conceptualize and work with elements totally foreign to their immediate environments—and they do not do well on the tests. Picturing these elements in a book, on a computer screen, or even on TV does not carry the impact or the experiential learning necessary for higher achievement test results. However, taking city dwellers to farms where they can touch, hear, smell, and interact with the animals does indeed raise their scores appreciably. The same is true for rural children who are taken on city trips. Later, in high school, Junior Achievement (JA) “educates students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs” (JA 2009). Reaching into the young adult years, we find a plethora of learned papers (Combs 1982) that distinguish between cognitive learning (learning vocabulary or multiplication tables) and experiential learning (addressing the needs and wants of the learner such as applied learning about engines in order to repair cars). Experiential learning involves, these authors tell us, “a direct encounter with the phenomena being studied rather than merely thinking about the encounter or only considering the possibility of doing something about it” (Kolb 2009). David A. Kolb’s model presents an experiential learning circle that involves four elements: (1) concrete experience— knowledge by acquaintance or direct practical experience; (2) reflective observation—what the experience means to the experiencer; (3) forming abstract



concepts—developing knowledge about the concept and comprehending it more fully; and (4) testing in new situations—testing the concepts in practice (Experiential Learning Cycle 2009). Experiences are transformed into an individual’s expanded capabilities and knowledge, then transformed into new experiences, and so forth. A great number of researchers of experiential learning have been influenced by the work of John Dewey (Dewey 1910), with most making use of his material on “concrete thinking” and “empirical and scientific thinking” as the bases for their studies. He looked at learning as a “framework for practice” that provides the experience for follow-on reflection. That practice-reflection combination is what enables students to become more independent when they no longer have authorities standing by at every turn of their lives (Knott 1994). This is especially important when one is trying to develop scientific skills in young people: Expecting them to learn simply by watching or listening was likened by Piaget to teaching swimming by having learners sit in rows on a wharf and watching swimmers in the water (Huitt and Hummel 2003). The AIMS Education Foundation researched a very large number of studies on the differences of attainment of students in traditional textbook and lecture courses versus those in hands-on studies. One of those studies was a metaanalysis of 15 years of study involving 13,000 students in 1,000 classrooms—activity-based programs produced marked differences in creativity, perception, logic development, language development, science content, and mathematics (Youngs 2003). At the undergraduate and MBA levels, more and more schools are expressing the desirability for reallife experiences as the backdrop for appreciating classroom work; their Web pages feature experiential learning as attractions as applicants to their programs. Such opening (or closely linked) Web pages reveal vast programs, exercises, and courses involving experiential learning activities (both on- and off-campus). NYIT (my own school), Amherst, Randolph, Ithaca, Williams, and Babson College, for example, incorporate experiential or service learning as part of their programs. I checked more than 150 college websites in my research for this paper and found that regardless of the size of the institution or its prominence (or lack thereof) in higher education ranks, experiential education was featured on their institutional Web pages (including those of University of California, Berkeley, Purdue, University of Pennsylvania, and Michigan State, to name just a few). The University of California, Davis has extensive references to to experiential learning whose (abbreviated) model can be expressed as “Do, Reflect, and Apply”—where knowledge is created through the transformation of

79 experience. If we are interested in seeing just how the ultimate of experiential education is conducted, we can examine the Frank Lloyd Wright Schools of Architecture in Arizona and Wisconsin—under his leadership, “learning by doing” was made the bedrock of their architectural learning experiences. At the MBA level, schools have sought to incorporate experiential education into their programs by providing internships, mentoring programs, and paid corporate residency programs (such as that at Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration, where students work in full-time, paid, MBA-level positions as part of the curriculum). Few MBA programs will explicitly state that they are seeking a set minimum number of years of work experience from their applicants. Nevertheless, the average number of years of full-time work experience for applicants who have won admission to top MBA programs has risen dramatically at the top B-schools; less than 2% of a recent class at Wharton had under two years of full-time work experience (MBAprograms.org 2009). While the Harvard Business School’s website specifically states that “there is no minimum work experience requirement for the MBA Program” (Harvard MBA Admissions Admissions Criteria 2009), the school’s educational philosophy is built on bringing real situations into the classroom as case studies from the moment of a student’s entry to the program. It does not take much imagination to visualize the difference in intellectual discussion levels that take place in a classroom of newly degreed undergraduates versus a class with business experience. For such programs to work with enriching discussions at challenging levels, the overwhelming majority of the participants must bring at least some real-life work experience to the discussions. A number of faculty members have developed classroom exercises for the teaching of production and operations management courses. One website (Wright and Ammar 2009) features eight different learning exercises involving Lego blocks, representations of products, and computer simulations intended to give students some tangible experiences with production problems and quantitative decisions, but none feature a “real product.” Another study compared the learning outcomes of two groups working on developing a database as they took a course in database management. The first group had a canned project for a fictitious library with the instructor as the client; the second group worked on an actual customer database for ToshibaHouston (Smith and Clinton 2006). The second group presented a far more challenging experience for the group as well as for the instructor—and took far more time than is ordinarily allotted for a course project. The real-world experience, participants noted, was richer because they not only completed an actual

80 project but also got to strengthen their oral and written communication skills and manage interpersonal conflicts. Other studies, such as the production of paper puppets (Heineke 1997) and the W. Edwards Deming beads experiments (Deming 1982), have reinforced the effectiveness of experiential learning. A paper by a small group of faculty members teaching different sections of an operations management course describes an e-learning-type course built on three different delivery modes: classroom, web-based, and experiential (Zimmers et al. 2004). E-learning indicates that the course provides links to other websites and lessons featuring related course materials, such as a slide show of an automotive transmission production facility. That slide show’s photos are, in turn, linked to still other instructional elements to provide in-depth references for students. Although the students did most of their computations and analyses on computers using spreadsheets and other software, the experiential element was provided by a visit to a transmission shop and the gathering of actual production and other relevant information from the shop. The most beneficial aspect of the learning came from real-time sharing of data generated by the transmission shop. Finally, there is the story of “Zarco”—a mock factory activity intended for use on the opening day of an operations management course (Polito et al. 2009). The instructor enters the classroom, takes his place at the head table, and without a word begins assembling a “ZargPak”—a paper, clips, and rubber band package. He then selects a small group of the students to be the new Zarco “factory” to duplicate and produce as many ZargPaks as possible. As the selected group studies the ZargPak and works out the assembly details, the instructor chooses other students to take roles that involve marketing, design, efficiency changes, and the like. Eventually, the whole class is involved with making and distributing ZargPaks. The intent of the exercise is to get the students involved with all phases of operations management through the immediate (first day) focus on the production of ZargPaks. Polito et al. (2009) found that this immediacy of involvement, demonstration of principles, and forced usage of certain principles heightens student interest in a course and results in significantly improved learning. In review of the literature, I was unable to locate any projects that incorporate the making of a real product and the principal tools for that production in an ordinary classroom—a gap in the reporting of games and simulations. Meeting the challenge of such tooling requires the students who are almost universally not engineers or even technically trained to stretch their imaginations, to work very closely together, and to effectively mine all their sources



(from family to friends to employers). They must equip themselves to set up fabrication lines that are more than handicraft operations in a classroom. This paper intends to help close the literature gap.

MBA Application of the Concepts

Top-tier MBA-level colleges have the luxury of choosing applicants with some years of experience in businesses relevant to their planned career paths, but many MBA programs accept students with zero to minimal levels of business experience. Even fewer of these applicants have ever worked with actual product or know how things are made despite the advent of cable TV and its “How Things Are Made,” “Building Big,” or “Deconstruction” programs, to name a few. In fact, because most students see themselves as future white collar employees, they do not take an interest in manufacturing details. They fail to appreciate that their future decisions may well require at least a basic familiarity with the manufacturing processes that turn out their products, or they may leave themselves open to extra costs, delayed shipments, and poor quality. Worse yet, almost all of the MBA entrants who just graduated with a bachelor’s degrees are as devoid of hands-on experience as Bob, the plumber’s helper, was in his field. To respond to this lack, I decided that I could improve their learning of operations management concepts by introducing a student-selected, self-designed paper product that could be completely fabricated in a regular classroom setting in less than four to five minutes per unit. The students would be responsible not only for the product but also for designing and making the production tools necessary to fabricate the product quickly, uniformly, and with reasonably good quality. The major objective of the particular hands-on experience chosen for my course is to show students how mechanical or technical changes in manufacturing affect a great many of the “front office” operations and the productivity of a firm. Changes in products are most often quite visible (features, size reductions, etc.) and easily understood by all those making decisions about that product. However, the changes that are made so that a product is better suited to a fabrication or assembly line may not be so evident to managers working at sites remote from the production facility. Such managers, in making their product sourcing or costing decisions without proper appreciation for the necessity or advisability of the changes, may cause missed marketing deadlines, cost overruns, approvals of inferior products, and even premature life cycle death of the products involved. Another objective of my project is to provide students with insights into what is required to establish



and operate a manufacturing line that turns out a mass-produced product. I had to design the exercise so that I could accomplish that objective within the physical constraints of an ordinary classroom. Unlike a computer simulation, the exercise can (and does, at times) degenerate into all the messiness of a real-life scenario, including a broad range of human conflict and competition, mishaps with tools and materials, failures from lack of planning, and the ever-present unexpected consequences that result from decision making on the job. The course of events during any demonstration often brings out important elements of why and how things fail, how better planning could have forestalled the poor results of some groups, and how superior creativity and insights can yield outstanding results. This experience should help students if they find themselves in careers that involve handling such matters as: (a) Budgetary control or approval of manufacturing-related expenditures within an organization. (Why do things cost what they do, and how do disruptions affect schedules and overall operations?) (b) On-shore or off-shore manufacturing of a product—whether providing staff input or liaison functions to the procurement functions or highly important—quality control aspects. (c) Supervisory or staff input to the producing arm of the organization—especially to the line departments doing the work that yields a firm’s revenues.

The Project

Students form groups of four or five to help a small crafts shop change its present handicraft production (one at a time, with wide variations in the appearance of the product) to more standardized mass production (minimal variations and at higher speeds of output and acceptable quality). This will enable the shop to sell in greater volume at its store and also enable it to promote Internet sales. The shop is open to selling whatever products the group designs for fabrication on its mass production line. Each group will fabricate (cut, paint, fold, or bend) component parts and assemble them (join the pieces by gluing, stapling, or taping) to produce a small paper product. The group will also design the jigs and fixtures to produce it. Jigs are devices that guide fabrication tools so that each piece produced is a duplicate of all the others. Fixtures are essentially workpieceholding devices. A fixture must be equipped with stops that prevent a worker from improperly loading or securing the paper. The jigs go onto the paper and are positioned by the fixture in such a way that a worker has no leeway to do any of the production steps incorrectly. The jig and fixture setup constrains

81 the cutting, bending, or joining steps to assure that a worker produces the product to specifications and that identical units come off the classroom desktop fabrication line. The product must include a minimum of four significant steps in its manufacture: cutting, coloring (flow pen, ink, crayon, pencil), folding, and joining (gluing, stapling, or taping). The target time for the manufacture of one unit must be under five minutes and the demonstration should show three to five units (one batch) being made. The choice of those four steps is deliberate: Aside from molding with papier-mâché and other forming processes, they represent the basic types of processes that can be used with paper. Students are expected to start with any commercially available sheets or ribbons of paper and to feed them into the line for processing. Each group designs its own small jigs and fixtures to permit speedy and uniform hand fabrication of the product. In addition, each group must prepare a complete bill of materials, fabrication chart, Operations Process Chart (2009), a right-hand/left-hand chart (for one station on the fabrication line), and a report on the utilization of the labor minutes on the line. The assignment is made at the beginning of the term, and all class projects are to be demonstrated starting with week 12 of the 15-week course. A complete demonstration including setup, manufacture, breakdown, presentation of charts, and cleanup must take no more than 30 minutes. Background reading for this project includes the work of pioneers of four major aspects of the fabrication line: (1) Adam Smith’s division of labor as a means of fostering higher rates of production (Smith 1776). Students reading his work will immediately see the logic of breaking up the production tasks for this project, as opposed to each person on the line making the entire product (which some students initially advocate); (2) Eli Whitney’s concepts of interchangeable parts that emphasize the necessity of uniformity of production (Whitney 1798). Whitney’s emphasis on interchangeable parts was meant to insure uniformity of gun parts production for ease of assembly; in this project, however, I show the students how variations in the product’s appearance can cause customers to view the differences as variations in the quality of what they are buying; (3) Frederick Winslow Taylor’s principles on management’s role in designing the methods and supplying the tools to get the job done (Taylor 1911). Students are cautioned that when there are quality deficiencies, it is because the jigs and fixtures are not properly designed—and it is management that bears the responsibility for that failure; and (4) Henry Ford’s experience in developing the assembly line (Ford 1908). Students gain some background into the experimentation and careful development of

82 the tasks to be performed at each station in order to evenly distribute a line’s workload. They are also directed to conduct a number of trial runs to get their fabrication lines operating smoothly and effectively. The project, derived directly from the content of my operations management course taught at the New York Institute of Technology, focuses on the six M’s of manufacturing as follows: Management—the groups establish officers and decide on performance norms for each member of the group. Furthermore, they had to choose a product, design it, gather or fabricate all the hand/power tools, jigs, and fixtures, and prepare the charts mentioned earlier. Manpower/womanpower—the groups apportion the labor for preparation of the project, assign duties for presentation/execution, and establish due dates. The necessity of training the operatives to do their jobs properly is stressed: Each group is expected to plot a learning curve of its respective tasks, and its performance is to be at a point where the curve levels off. If someone within a group cannot achieve a respectable level, the group reassigns that person to work that he or she can do so as to reach the desired levels. Money—the approximate cost per unit of production is calculated using actual and imputed numbers wherever necessary. (For the basic exercise, the cost aspect of the production analysis is not of paramount importance. For other projects using multiple pieces fabricated on the line plus “outsourced” parts, cost analysis can be a major part of the demonstration presentation.) Machines—the project requirements call for the group to manufacture its own jigs and fixtures to turn out parts and assemblies in a uniform manner. There is to be only the slightest of variations among the production pieces. A word about safety and legal aspects: In one fortuitous incident that involved a paper cut, the class chose to delve into OSHA regulations and the subject of worker safety, workers’ compensation, product liability, and costs to a business for appropriate programs and insurance. Design for green production calls for the avoidance of toxic paint sprays or glue sprays in the classroom, and design for minimum waste calls for careful procurement of raw materials and their utilization. Methods—the fabrication method is established by drawings and/or charts so that someone not versed in building the product can follow instructions and produce it. Smooth functioning of the line at the time of presentation is assured by practice and training of the workers. Safety of the workers is paramount during cutting (no knife slips, no finger incidents) and painting (no use of aerosol sprays or lead based paints), and material safety data sheets are provided for each chemical used. As part of the methods design, charts for left-handed and right-handed workers are were



set up and the use of such charts in job design to comply with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provisions is discussed. Students have been especially interested in questions such as how to change jigs and fixtures to accommodate a stroke victim (who may be paralyzed on one side) or desk arrangements for a wheelchair-bound worker. Materials—the products are to be made of paper but cloth or some other easily fabricated material can be substituted with faculty permission. Small metal fasteners, pivot points, and other minor parts can be procured from outside “suppliers” for the classroom fabrication line. The amount of time that must be devoted to this project depends on how many topics are generally covered as part of the regular course content. In my case, I introduce the concepts of assembly and fabrication lines and cover the gamut of fabrication—from the use of hand tools (plus jigs and fixtures) to the operating principles of computer integrated machines, lines, and factories—as part of my regular course content. Specifics about the experiential exercise are then covered with individual groups in after-class discussions. During the ensuing weeks, I devote anywhere from just a few minutes to a quarter of an hour of each class session to the discussion of questions about the project so that all students profit from any one group’s problems and comments. Finally, I schedule two three-hour class periods for demonstrations and allow at least one additional class session during the term should we have need for demonstration overrun time. Many of the question and answer interchanges run past our class scheduled dismissal time but a very high percentage of the students stay and participate until the discussions end.

Experience with Execution of the Project

Execution of the project runs smoothly for groups that have taken the time to practice their presentations and less smoothly for groups that did not practice. Most of the outright failures, however, occur not because the project is overly demanding or because of a lack of student interest, but rather because a particular group’s members were under heavy employer pressures; they were simply had been unable to allocate the time needed to do the project at a better than C level. There will occasionally be groups that disintegrate under pressures of jobs, families, personality incompatibilities, etc. These incidents are also discussed in class—how could a group have prevented what happened or forged a “work around” to keep the project alive? Some groups have access to home workshops or shops at their workplaces and bring in cleverly designed, well-made wooden or metal jigs and fixtures. Still others bring in homemade tooling of


83


Figure 1

Jig for Cutting a Box Blank

heavy artist board, Styrofoam, or plastic with impressive displays of design and execution ingenuity. The interest quotient of the students is usually very high and the groups frequently vie with one another to devise the cleverest product and the fastest, highestquality production line. Grading of projects is done per the Production Line Grading Guide presented in the appendix. While a group is presenting its fabrication process and supporting charts, the instructor quickly evaluates their work, using the grading guidelines. Afterward, a quick evaluation is made of the number of A’s and B’s, etc., and from this a composite grade for the product, jigs, and fixtures is awarded along with a second composite grade for the charts. Students manufactured jigs and fixtures as shown in Figures 1–3. Figure 4 shows the completed (but uncolored) box. The jig in Figure 1 is used to cut out the blank for the cardboard box. A knife is used to trace the outline of the jig onto the cardboard sheet held underneath it. The wide slots are meant for someone to use an empty ballpoint pen to make grooves in the cardboard; this permits easy folding. On the fabrication line, the cutout blank of the box is then “painted” (using flow pens) for the coloring step. The next step is folding and, in the initial demonstrations of the fabrication line, folding was done by holding the paper and folding it along the grooves to achieve the shape for gluing. In later demonstrations of the line, the folding jig/fixture of Figures 2 and 3 had been built and it supplanted the hand holding of the third step Figure 2

Folding Jig/Fixture (Open)

Figure 3

Folding Jig/Fixture (Closed)

in the production. The jig folded over on itself and the sides closed against the main block as shown in Figure 3. Because this jig also held the paper in place while it folded, it is also a form of fixture. When the sides and top were “closed” onto the block, all the sides of the box except the top were glued together; the jig/fixture was then opened and the newly fabricated box removed. The open top, of course, allows the box to be filled at a later time. The jig/fixture made the folding step so fast that the amount of workers assigned to steps 1, 2, and 4 had to be doubled to utilize the production capabilities of this technical change. The fabrication processes were presented in class with group members taking up positions on the fabrication line spread across two classroom tables. After the demonstration of their line operations, the groups presented their assembly charts, operations process charts, bills of material, and right-hand/left-hand charts. Particular attention was paid to the uses of the right-hand/left-hand charts in cases where firms have to deal with disabled employees—what steps could be eliminated in the work being done, what steps could be supplemented by a machine, and what steps could be extensively redesigned if necessary to accommodate handicapped employees—at reasonable costs to Figure 4

Completed Box (Uncolored)

firms? The use of a chart to identify points at which an employee might not be able to handle a job is also a key management concern—ADA investigative agencies need convincing proof that a disabled worker is not suited for a job because otherwise a discrimination charge can be filed against the company. At the end of each demonstration, the presentation is critiqued by the class and the instructor. Presenters might be challenged to explain why particular jigs, fixtures, or product design were adopted, or how they could have been improved. It is not unusual for a class to voice lavish compliments when a group presents a particularly impressive project.

Benefits of the Experiential Work

As expected, real experiences presented the students with much more than just neatly wrapped sequences of events or alternatives from which to choose their alternatives. Real-world considerations invaded the classroom in the form of personality differences, time pressures, attention deficits, job problems, family problems, and school pressures that diverted students from their assigned tasks and caused missed project deadlines. Groups had to learn to make painful compromises in their products in the following terms. 1. What various members of a group individually wanted and what the group could agree to. 2. What looked great, what would make a group proud, and what could actually be fabricated in the classroom setting within the assignments time constraints. 3. The nature and variety of the jigs and fixtures that could be made by the students. Some groups with home or employer workshops produced impressive jigs and complex fixtures. Groups that sought outside help with their tooling reported that the meetings and discussions they had with their “suppliers” were among the most interesting and challenging aspects of the work. 4. The skills available in the group versus the specific tasks that had to be accomplished. The most skilled persons were frequently those with the most pressing demands on time they could devote to the project. As mentioned elsewhere in this paper, time was the major constraint on what groups could accomplish interms of design and quality, be it in tooling or in the product. Some of the best products were produced by groups with poorly designed jigs and fixtures. Some of the worst products were made by groups with professional quality tooling.

Important Learning Elements of This Exercise

Most of the students at one time or another during the term expressed amazement at the sheer amount of



work involved in getting a simple product designed, set up for production, produced, and through inspection (although this was in no way a complaint about the project—they appreciated the learning that was taking place). The students noted the reactions of their fellow students to their products. Class reactions to demonstrations were important in that classmates could offer worthwhile suggestions to simplify products while enhancing them they could make suggestions for more effective fabrication steps that a group may not have even contemplated in its deliberations. It most certainly was a confirmation that designers, whether of products or production, should always seek the widest possible inputs to their decisions before freezing them for production. Next, the students learned some fundamental and practical aspects about production. The first was the meaning and use of the learning curve in forecasting labor costs for bidding on contracts. A group member assigned to do the cutting for the box blank used the template of Figure 1 to guide the cuts. He recorded a time of 18 seconds to do the blank with no damaging cuts or movement of the template. A student with no experience in handling the knife was then allowed to train himself by cutting 10 templates. His times decreased as shown in Figure 5, and the shape and characteristics of his learning curve were compared to one calculated using the Wright Learning Curve calculator developed by NASA (NASA 2010). With a learning rate of 84.4, the NASA calculator predicted that the 10th unit would take only 23 seconds—which was precisely as observed in the classroom. However, the actual cumulative average rate as predicted by NASA was only 30.1 seconds, whereas the classroom exercise showed that the drop was not as steep and yielded an average of 35 seconds. Students learned to be cautious in the use of precalculated curve analyses: the NASA Wright curve used for this real-life situation would have led to a contract bid that was too optimistic in terms of the average time needed to make a unit. A special assignment was then given to the group: Your client has asked you for a production run of Figure 5

Observed Performance Times

60

Number of seconds

84

50

40

30

20

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Trial number

7

8

9

10

11


85


Table 1

Fabrication Line Before Technical Change

No. of Minutes

Cut 1 operator Position 1

Paint 1 operator Position 2

1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

1 1 1

1 1 1 1

Fold 1 operator Position 3

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

50 units of your product. How many minutes will it take to produce them, and how will the utilization of workers on the line be affected if you run the batch without any other batches preceding or following? The production line consisted of four workers who were each given one minute to accomplish an assigned task in the order of cutting, coloring, folding, and gluing—the line was balanced so that each worker required the same amount of time. Before the technical change (in the folding jig), the fabrication line had four stations balanced so that each station took no more than one minute to complete its work. The line produced one completed unit every minute starting with the fifth minute. In order to produce 50 units, the line had idle stations for the first three minutes and the last four minutes of the production run—each station consuming one labor minute. The production of the 50 units yielded the data shown in Table 1. Table 1 amply illustrates why job or batch shops “hate” short runs. At the beginning of the job, there are idle stations until the initial four work pieces fill each of the positions. They are then followed by additional inputs to the line as pieces are finished. At the end of the production run, stations are left idle as replacement work pieces stop entering the line and the last work-in-process items move down the line and then leave it. Note that in the 54th minute, station 4 is not idle—it is pushing out the 50th unit. There are 15 minutes of idle positions out of a total of 216 minutes of available time on the positions of the line—a loss of 7% of available production time if the shop cannot find alternative (fill in) work for the vacated positions (while the 50-piece batch process is exiting the fabrication line). It is just this type of fill-in activity that set the stage for a huge commercial product liability lawsuit. This case was settled out of court and papers were sealed to assure confidentiality. (I learned of the details from

Glue 1 operator Position 4

Total completed by end of minute

Cumulative average: Position/labor minute completed

1 1 1

0 0 0 0 1 2

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.05 0.08

44 45 46 47 48 49 50

0.23 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.23

1 1 1 1 1 1

a participant in the case who was assured anonymity.) A giant fertilizer factory made a highly potent weed killer in addition to fertilizer products. The machines that filled the bags were used alternatively for fertilizer and weed killer. To utilize time that was becoming available on filler line positions, plant operatives began feeding weed killer into the line as a huge run of fertilizer bags was being completed. However, because they forgot to pull the left over empty fertilizer bags off the line before changing to weed killer, a few hundred bags of weed killer left the factory in bags marked as fertilizer. Subsequently, these incorrectly marked bags made their way to the hothouse growing beds of one of the largest exotic flower growers in the world. The beds were “fertilized” with weed killer which burned out the flower beds and ruined the soil in them. Hundreds of tons of the richest and finest soil (compounded over years of nurturing) had to be discarded in toxic waste dumps and the growing pans and plumbing had to be completely sterilized. It took four years to bring the flower yields back to the pre-incident production levels, and the settlement of this case cost the fertilizer firm millions. Notice that the jig in Figure 1 has long, narrow slots machined into it. These slots were used as guides for someone with an (empty) ballpoint pen to make grooved folding lines in the blank. When the jig was lifted off, the paper was simply folded along the grooved lines and shaped to make the box. This fold step was clumsy and had to be done with all the fingers holding parts of the boxes in shape as the glue was applied and dried. It was the worst position for a worker on that fabrication line. Another group that also made boxes developed a jig/fixture as shown in Figure 2. The group simply placed its cutout blank on the jig and made the first fold of the cardboard around the cube, then bent the


86


Table 2

Fabrication Line After Technical Change at Position 3

No. of minutes

Cut 2 workers Position 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

2.2 2.2 2.5 2.5 2.8 2.8 3.0 3.0 3.1 3.1 3.5 3.6 3.7 4.0 4.0 4.0

Paint 2 workers Position 2 2.2 2.2 2.5 2.5 2.8 2.8 3.0 3.0 3.1 3.1 3.5 3.6 3.7 4.0 4.0 4.0

Fold 1 worker Position 3

2.2 2.2 2.5 2.5 2.8 2.8 3.0 3.0 3.1 3.1 3.5 3.6 3.7 4.0 4.0 4.0

cube against its side to make another fold. The hinged parts of the jig were folded against the sides and the box was formed into the appropriate shape. Three of the cardboard sides were glued into place and dried on the jig. Then, the box was pulled off the jig and was ready for use. This technical improvement was appended to the first fabrication line to take the place of the hand folding and holding that was being done in positions 3 and 4. The line then became completely unbalanced because the folding part of the work was completed in far less than a half a minute. So, labor minutes and appropriate jigs and fixtures were doubled for positions 1, 2, and 4 to supply enough work for a very fast-operating position 3. This time, the production of 50 units went as shown in Table 2. Because of the additional labor assigned to the project, underutilization periods became a more serious concern—with 26 labor minutes idle out of 140 total labor minutes, underutilization rose to 19% of the total time available. In the 20th minute, station 4 was not idle: it was completing the last 4 units. As in the previous case, a company confronting such a situation must be careful to schedule lead-in and lead-out jobs so that workers do not remain idle waiting for specific batches to clear the line. Notice what happened at the start of this uplabored, technically changed fabrication line: Production, on the part of two workers in a position, did not simply double for that work station—each station more than doubled the prechange output, though some confusion and interference between partners required several trials to establish a smoothly coordinated fabrication line. Before the folding change was made, each station was limited by the throughput of

Glue 2 workers Position 4

2.2 2.2 2.5 2.5 2.8 2.8 3.0 3.0 3.1 3.1 3.5 3.6 3.7 4.0 4.0 4.0

Total completed by end of minute

Cumulative average: Position/labor minute completed

00 00 00 00 22 44 69 94 122 150 180 210 241 272 307 343 380 420 460 500

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.06 0.10 0.14 0.17 0.19 0.21 0.23 0.25 0.26 0.28 0.29 0.31 0.32 0.33 0.35 0.36

station 3 (folding). With the folding jig as part of the fabrication line, it was no longer the throttle point. At station 1, the two workers were able to help each other when either had a moment’s difficulty; as soon as they cleared up their difficulties, they worked together as a well-functioning team. At one point, the cutters at station 1 split their jobs to take advantage of one worker being right-handed and the other being left-handed. As the workers across the entire line became more proficient, per-station output levels rose to as high as four pieces per minute. Of major importance was the change in the production fixture: Because the introduction of the box folder jig of Figure 2 was considered a key technical change, graphs of the process were made to study the break points. The major element of interest here was the increased productivity measured in cumulative average pieces per worker made on the line before and after the change, as shown in Figure 6. At the maximum productivity rate, the difference in cumulative average pieces per labor minute from before the folding change to after it yielded a 57% improvement. The before and after curves in Figure 6 illustrate the sharp increases in output per worker that were achieved by the up-staffing of the fabrication line (made possible by the improvement to the bottleneck folding step). Note that the line had no output until all stations were filled with work in process. This further emphasized to the students why inventory and idle stations in batch processes are usually significant cost factors. These two elements also show how inventory financing costs are incurred by a firm because it cannot start billing for completed units until at least some


87


Figure 6

sparked class discussions and the exploration of different concepts during the discussions. This type of exercise is one of the most satisfying and rewarding that I have led in my classrooms.

Productivity Before/After Technical Change 0.4

Cum avg pos/labor minute

After 0.3

Future Research

0.2 Before

0.1

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Minutes

production comes off the line, for shipping, at the end of the fifth minute.

Conclusions

Experiential learning of the managerial aspects of a production line opened students eyes to what (in their own words) “were amazing ramifications of real-time problems.” They assimilated the material that was assigned and then went beyond it to cover aspects of production that they would never have thought of otherwise. Many of the students had previously been involved with computer simulations of various financial and marketing games—they overwhelmingly felt that the experiential exercise in production was far more beneficial in terms of their assimilation of the material than any conceivable computer simulation could have been. They pointed out the number of times the class diverted from scheduled class events to cover such points as the learning and technical change curves that had been made real by the exercise. Furthermore, the students discussed how worker underutilization problems at production start-up and completion were made startlingly evident when they saw idle workers on the line. The link of these utilization and underutilization aspects as an opening to product liability cases opened a completely new world to nearly all of the students—most of them went, unassigned, to the library to explore the huge variety of product liability journals and litigation reports and same away with comprehensive, international reviews of the subject. The grading of the entire process was as fair and objective as possible; I used the grading categories shown in the appendix to evaluate projects. Additional credit was given to groups whose presentations

The curves and numbers used in Figures 5 and 6 and Tables 1 and 2 are taken from several repetitions of the fabrication line and are supplied here to illustrate typical results from the project reporting groups. Group demographics were not researched nor was evaluative data over the years of the exercise retained. However, it is recognized that the data generated from the projects do open possibilities for future research. Opportunities for future research involve group demographics that could be linked to the grade evaluations. Over a suitable period of years, relationships could be researched between success with these projects, students’ countries of origin, their ages of exposure to tools, machines, manufacturing related activities, and more. Appendix. Production Line Grading

The following Production Line Grading Guide is wholly original to and was designed and developed by this paper’s author, Irwin Gray, Ph.D., P.E (Gray 2009). This is a guide to the manner by which student efforts and the results of classroom manufacturing exercises are evaluated. The faculty member observes the demonstration and awards grades for each major aspect of the presentation as laid out here. Each group’s performance yields two overall grades: 1. The first grade is an evaluation of the production charts. 2. The second grade is an evaluation of the product and the fabrication process itself. In calculating a student’s class grade for the entire term, the two grades earned for this class enter into the final accounting with the heaviest weight put on item 2 above; a lesser weight is given to item 1. 3. Grading for this exercise is done with a piece of carbon paper that permits two copies of the completed grade sheet to be filled out simultaneously. One copy is given to the student and the other retained by the faculty member. The faculty member fills out grades for specific items while the demonstration of the fabrication and charts proceeds. At the conclusion of a presentation, the various item grades are evaluated and an overall grade is awarded for the charts and product/process. Individual faculty members combine the partial grades in a manner appropriate to their individual classes. Production Line Grading Guide Group Number: ___________ Date: ___________ Time: ___________ Team members presenting: ____________________________ _____________________________________________________

88 Grading The grading for the production exercise is on the basis of A, B, C, D, or F. The level of grade is keyed to the following definitions. A: This step was exceptionally well-conceived and executed so that its function was effective and very wellperformed. B: This step was properly carried out with acceptable imagination and performance so that its function was carried out acceptably. C: The step was performed with insufficient preparation on too simple a challenge, or an assumed challenge was impossible to perform so that its function was haltingly or clumsily executed with lesser quality. D: This was a mediocre performance with very little evidence of much thought or preparation. The function was improperly or poorly carried out. F: This performance showed that the performers scraped the bottom as far as trying to get by with little to no effort. The results clearly demonstrate this: The function was poorly carried out, was incomplete, and damaged the whole process of the fabrication line. Even if the performance was accompanied by imaginative excuses, it is awarded a poor grade. Charts Some steps or items may be left out of a chart to make it clearer for presentation in class. The completeness, applicability, and thoroughness of preparation of each chart will be judged using the following guidelines. Bill of Materials Chart (1) Does it list the parts, descriptions, quantities completed for one unit of the product being built? ( ) (2) Consider how well a purchasing agent could fulfill the buying of the materials need for production based on the chart. ( ) (3) Is the fabrication or assembly chart appropriate for the process being demonstrated in class? ( ) (4) Consider whether it properly lists subcontracted parts. Does it improperly list parts that are not components of the final product delivered to the customer or end user? ( ) (5) Are elements missing from the chart? Are there items that should have been listed or described better or more clearly? ( ) (6) Is the chart readable and easily interpreted from any position in the room? ( ) Fabrication Chart (1) Is it complete enough for a “stranger” totally unfamiliar with the item to cut out, fold, paint, and or join the parts together to make the product? ( ) (2) Are there elements missing from the chart? What could be shown better or more clearly? ( ) (3) Is the chart readable and easily interpreted from any position in the room? ( ) Operations Process Chart (1) Does it show the sequence of tools used for each of the workers on the fabrication line? Is anything missing or unclear? ( ) (2) Does it track the product through the process and show all the tools, jigs, and fixtures used at each step? ( )



(3) Could a manufacturing engineer figure out what tools to buy and how to lay them out for maximum flow of product? ( ) (4) Is the chart readable and easily interpreted from any position in the room? ( ) Right-Hand/Left-Hand Chart (1) Does the chart show what each hand is doing each time either hand changes its function? ( ) (2) Does the chart show evidence that the fabrication process has been studied and revised to make it more efficient to make the product or easier to carry out the process? ( ) (3) Does the chart reveal where efficiencies could be increased by substituting specially designed tools for ordinary household manual ones? ( ) (4) Could the chart be used to redesign the job for handicapped workers? ( ) (5) Are there essential steps missing from the chart? What could have been shown better or more clearly? ( ) (6) Is the chart selective—does it leave out excessive detail or show too many steps that are not needed to represent the fabrication process and how it was executed? ( ) (7) Is the chart readable and easily interpreted from any position in the room? ( ) The Product/Process, Layout, and Presentation The group must demonstrate its ability to produce three of the products with reasonable accuracy—symmetry, same dimensions/cuts, good folds, joins, and color (except where intentionally different from unit to unit)—within the allocated time. The Product (1) Is the product put together reasonably well? Does it meet the established specification—incorporating cutting, folding, gluing, “painting” steps? Does it look like something people would buy? ( ) (2) Is the level of the product appropriate to the assignment—not too complex or too simple? This is recognizably not an objective appraisal of what is an appropriate level. For example, a simple bookmark is below the level required for this course, and a complex Chinese jigsaw puzzle is considerably above the level. ( ) (3) How complete is the fabrication process demonstrated in class? Are subcontracted parts logically subcontracted or did the group subcontract parts to avoid dealing with necessary steps in class? ( ) (4) Is there anything in the product that could have been simplified to make it easier for the craft shop owner to fabricate on his own line? ( ) (5) Are there any elements that can be easily added to the product to better suit it to the target market? ( ) Jigs/Fixtures Process (1) Are there instances of hands being used inefficiently as holding tools because the group failed to design/build proper fixtures? ( ) (2) Do the fixtures control the positioning of the work and jigs so that a tired, disinterested, or lazy worker is be constrained enough to “forced” to do a good job? ( ) (3) Would the hands’ skilled work and inordinate care be made easier and faster in the execution with a better jig? ( ) (4) Are there places a jig or fixture should have been used but were missing? ( )



Workplace Layout (1) Is material waste minimized? Is the production line waste disposal properly thought out? ( ) (2) Is there a smooth flow of the work pieces through the line? Or does the line bunch up behind one part of the process that is much more difficult than all the rest? ( ) (3) Are there steps in the production that are too complex? Is there evidence that the group thought them through? Should steps be rearranged or improved? ( ) (4) Is there a reasonable balance of work between positions or is one position assigned much more of the task than the other positions? ( ) (5) Does the manufacture of an item take an excessive amount of time from start to finish? Does the group manage to make the minimum number of items? ( ) The Overall Presentation (1) Does it show evidence of careful thought, planning, preparation, and rehearsal? ( ) (2) Are the tools charts, jigs, fixtures, and the workplace laid out, well and clearly presented? Did the group’s thought, preparation, and rehearsal eliminate major deficiencies in the presentation or were correctable deficiencies remaining in the presentation? ( ) (3) Does the presentation come across as worthy of the time it took to be viewed in this class? ( ) Overall Grades as Evaluated 1. Charts 2. Product, Jigs/Fixtures, Layout, Presentation

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