2. American Greetings: New Beginning Team AI: Will Cheesman- Innovation and Creativity Nakul Rajaram- Project Management Andrew Schuch- Technical Contributions Rohit Awade- Communications

3. Background ❧ They are the largest greeting card company in the United States. ❧ Greeting Cards are printed in their Bardstown, Kentucky factory. ❧ Also own Carlton Cards, Tender Thoughts, Just For You, and Gibson Greeting Cards.

4. About Bardstown Facility ❧ Their manufacturing facility is 100,800 sq ft. ❧ Factory has three main processes die-cut, thermo, and packaging. ❧ Work in progress sections fill in the rest of the floor plan.

5. Statement of Need ❧ Analyze floor plan and improve material handling. ❧ Identify bottlenecks in process. ❧ Decrease work in progress area. ❧ Improve overall efficiency of the plant. ❧ Cost justify all alternative solutions.

6. Interesting Facts ❧ The plant manufacture 250,000,000 thermographic cards per year. ❧ American Greetings recently overtook Hallmark to be the biggest greeting card manufacturer in the world.

7. Project Management Gantt Chart

8. Process ❧ All the sheets get a Hot-Press and Die-Cut ❧ Manually transported to WIP ❧ Moves from WIP to Thermographic Card Press ❧ Manually transported to WIP ❧ Carted to Packaging Lines for final step

9. Floor Plan

10. Approach: Workflow ❧ Modeled the entire process on Arena. ❧ Based on drawings and data gathered, made the arena model of the plant. ❧ Identified thermo machines as bottleneck.

11. Approach: Carts ❧ Identified remodeling of old carts as an area to improve functionality. ❧ Make carts more ergonomically efficient. ❧ Improve carts to reduce cycle time. ❧ Increase the volume, reduce WIP. ❧ Reduce potential for injuries.

12. Ergonomic Improvement ❧ Use cost effective carts with electric scissor lifts attached to bottom of skids. ❧ Adjustable work station to keep materials at a comfortable height. ❧ Angled handlebars for smaller risk of injury, along with less effort required.

13. Expected Results: Cart ❧ Reducing the area utilized by Work In Progress(WIP) inventory. ❧ With the larger cart volume, each new cart can about one and a half old carts. ❧ This would save over 346 square feet of WIP area across the plant.

14. Expected Results: Cart ❧ New cart has 52 % more volume. ❧ 66:100 ratio new to old carts ❧ This ratio leads to annual savings of $140,646.28

15. Expected Result: Thermo ❧ Bottleneck in the Thermo section of the plant ❧ 3 Heidelberg (New) ❧ 5 Davidson (Old) ❧ New Heidelberg will increase production and reduce the wait time for the process

16. ❧ Add Heidelberg (70,000 cards/shift) ❧ Remove 2 Davidsons (30,000 cards/shift) ❧ Wait time reduced by 24% ❧ Overall throughput increased by 14% Expected Result: Thermo

17. Recommendations ❧ Convert all old carts to our new design. ❧ Purchase a new heidelberg thermo machine. ❧ New Electric scissor lift cart

18. Conclusion ❧ Got to experience first hand the inner working of a manufacturing unit ❧ Learnt the importance of a team in real life situations ❧ Communicating and working with real clients

19. Thank you! Contact Email: nrajaram@purdue.edu