1. Assignment 1: Case Study 2
BUSI 3321:Operations Management
Section: 201
Assignment 1: Case Study 2
Selection Of A Layout Configuration For Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems Using The AHP
Done By:
Latifa Al-Shammari  
Bashayer Al-Nahdi
Fatima Al-Bagshi

2. Outline Introduction Summary of the Case
Identifying and explaining the Techniques
Productivity and competitiveness
Product Design
Forecasting
Analysis and Recommendations
Conclusion

3. Introduction
Manufacturing organizations must provide sufficient flexibility to produce variety of products depending on consumers’ preferences, and to be a good competitive in the market.
Changes in customer requirements force a need for having new designs of manufacturing systems.
According to that manufacturing organizations started to use Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS).

4. Summary Reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs):
Designed to produce different product types in shortest time and lower cost, but without lowering the quality.
The major characteristics of this system is called re-configurability:
The ability of rearranging and/or changing manufacturing elements to adjust with the improved environmental and technological changes.
First the article was talking about RMS which is system designed to…….

5. Summary (cont.)
There are many other meanings of RMS according to different researchers, such as:
Zhao who consider RMS as “a manufacturing system in which a variety of products required by customers are classified into families, each of which is a set of similar products that correspond to one configuration of the RMS”.

6. Summary (cont.)
For preparing layout configuration for different types of manufacturing systems; various researchers used mathematical programs. some of those researchers:
Cheng and Chen (1996): proposed a simple quadratic assignment formulation to minimize the total distance between machines within manufacturing cells.
Bazargan-Lari (1999): discussed layout design problem and emphasized that programming was one of the solution methodologies for making decision for layout design.
Also, the article showed that for preparing ………

7. Summary (cont.)
Preparing RMS may require different layout configurations while switching from one product to the other.
So there are some criteria’s, which can influence on choosing layout configurations, as:
Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP): which developed by Thomas Saaty (1980). And it is developed to structure the criteria for the selection of the most appropriate layout for configuration stage. And the main goal is to select the most preferred layout configuration.
There are some objectives for selecting layout configuration, which are re-configurability, cost, quality, and reliability.

8. Identifying the techniques
Productivity and competitiveness
Product design
Forecasting
After we read and summarize the case we found that this case study was including many efficient techniques; and after reading the case we select the techniques related to Operation Management course, which are:
Each of these techniques will be explained in the next slides.

9. Productivity and Competitiveness

10. Productivity and competitiveness
Effective product pricing.
Improve product quality.
Product differentiation.
Flexibility to change.
Time efficiency.

11. Product Design

12. Product Design
Product design process is the method of creating new product/services to satisfy the customer.

13. Product design and development process
Identifying needs and concept generation and development
Production detail design/prototype production
Testing and sampling analysis
Low scale production
Marketing and selling process
Economic / competitor analysis and a large scale manufacturing process

14. Forecasting

15. The concept of forecasting
Forecasting is: a planning tool that helps management in its attempts to cope with the uncertainty of the future, relying mainly on data from the past and present and analysis of trends.

16. Forecasting (Cont.)
Forecasting starts with certain assumptions based on:
The management’s experience
The Knowledge
The judgment

18. Forecasting (Cont.) The techniques that the company use:
Trying to predict the new design that makes the customer satisfied
Used the sensitivity analysis to highlight the configuration solutions with respect to layout re-configurability as the most important criterion
Used other techniques such as exponential smoothing, moving averages, regression analysis, and trend projection.

19. Forecasting (Cont.) The problems that the company face:
Measuring flexibility
System configuration
Cost estimation
Layout configuration

20. Forecasting (Cont.) The effectiveness of forecasting:
It helps management resolve the dilemma of more demanding customer requirements and greater shareholder expectations.
Its a projection of future business in a manufacturing and distribution companies

21. Forecasting (Cont.) Suggestions for improvements:
Measuring forecast accuracy
Makes improvements to the specific forecast as well as to the demand planning process.
Enables us to review and correct the individual product forecasts.

22. Analysis and Recommendations

23. Analysis
The company has adjusted the production process to re-design the manufacturing layout to accommodate the customer requirements.
The company uses the effective product pricing, to achieve the lower products cost by applying latest manufacturing technologies, smart utilization of resources.
Proposing the classical layout models to minimize material handling cost for a single product system.
Use the time efficiency in produce different product families in the shortest time and at the lowest cost without sacrificing quality.
Using the knowledge-based system, for creating the AHP model that will lead to the selection of the best layout.

24. Recommendations
lower products cost by applying latest manufacturing technologies, smart utilization of resources.
Improve the productivity by reducing the cost and its ability to bend the system to suit the customers’ needs.
Make little different against the competitors' products by offering the extra feature in the product definitely
Start focusing on marketing and selling process in order to build the brand reputation in the market place.
Measure, review and correct the forecast accuracy if we wish to improve and to overcome with the problems that the company might face.

25. Conclusion Summarized the case study
Identify the techniques related to our OM class
Show the relation between these techniques and the case study
Explain our recommendations
In conclusion, we summarized the case study which was about Reconfigurable Manufacturing systems and we explain the meaning of this system and the importance of it for the manufacturing organizations
We identify the techniques related to our OM class, which were Productivity and competitiveness, product design, forecasting

26. References
Business Dictionary.com. (N.D). Sensitivity Analysis. Retrieved Nov 1, From:
Bushman, Melissa. (Apr 12, 2007). Why is Forecasting Important to an Organization?. Yahoo Voices. Retrieved Nov 1, From:
Forecasting. (N.D). Forecasting. Wikipedia. Retrieved Nov 1, From:
Roozenburg , N. F. M., & Ekels , J. Product Design and Development 
Buffa , S. Modern Production/Operation Management . (8th ed.)
Perkins , G. Turning Corporate Pain to Gain 

27. Thank You