Management and the Technology Professional – B302

Case study answer 2

As we were given the breakdown of the manufacturing process, along with the dependencies and the duration of each step, I was able to use CPA (critical path analysis).

S0 — S1 —<         >— S4 —<            >— S8 — S9

The tree shown above was drawn to calculate the critical path, 'S#' indicates each step in the manufacturing process of the semiconductor. The highlighted steps (S0, S1, S2, S4, S6, S7, S8, and S9) show the critical path, the time duration for the critical route is 17 days; this is the minimum time of which the manufacturing process can be completed.

The entire process of this product manufacturing is planned using a defined build schedule to make efficient use of the company’s resources, this process is split into three major manufacturing stages these are:
• Fabrication (S1, S2, S3)
• Assembly (S4, S5, S6)
• Configuration (S7, S8, S9)

The sixth step is ‘performing final tests’, this testing establishes the detailed performance characteristics of the semi-finished product. There are Three options available to the supervising engineer to whom is responsible for the test missed during step 6 when it becomes apparent the next day, these are:
• Create a log documenting the particular test within step 6 which was not performed and continue the manufacturing process.
• Repeat the test missed from the previous day, although testing equipment may need to be reconfigured and tests thereafter may need to be repeated again.
• Repeat the whole of the step 6 again.

Performing the final tests is at the end of the assembly stage of the manufacturing, therefore as the supervising engineer I would repeat the entirety of step 6 to avoid jeopardising the integrity of the whole assembly stage of the manufacturing process, all involved with the final testing step can repeat the processes normally as they would thus avoiding any confusion. All involved with the configuration stage should be notified promptly about repeating the step as this will directly affect their stage, The configuration stage would be affected as it has a direct dependency with Step 7 and indirect dependencies with steps 8 and 9 this would result in a delay and an increase in time on the critical path duration because these stages would not be able to commence till step 6 is finished and the assembly stage completed. Step 5 would not be affected in any way by repeating step 6 as it commences at the same time and has no dependencies with it. As the supervising engineer I should notify the first stage as tested hardware would be amassed from the fabrication stage, at a greater rate than the assembly stage can deal with due to the increased delay, this is not beneficial as the technology is this industy is fast moving and often short lived, and can easily over exceed the demand needed. Notifying all stages of production about delays would also give eash individual step time to make any necessary changes needed to their processes without affecting the production rates.