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Printed Crt Essay

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PRINTED CIRCUITS COMPONENTS FOR A JIT FACTORY Mr. Carl Burger, supply manager at Acacia Company, is faced with a problem of researching several electronic components for a new graphic plotter, manufactured in a just-in-time environment. Acacia Company is a major producer of graphic plotters, renowned for top-quality and innovative products. The newest unit in the product line is the 440A, a relatively inexpensive eight-pen, A-size (8½” x 11”) plotter, designed for use with personal computers. Thoughtful design of the component parts, along with a dedicated value engineering effort, resulted in substantially fewer component parts required for assembly. Extensive market research indicated that the plotter was priced lower than most …show more content…

The PC cell contains state-of-the-art robotics equipment requiring little human intervention. The equipment is designed to select the component parts while still packaged, load its feeder bins, and automatically insert the components into PC boards based on a computerized XY insertion program. There is also a JIT stockroom facility near the production areas, and a separate MRP system. Parts purchased for the 440A must meet special JIT requirements. Suppliers are requested to use bar-coded labels to identify their shipments for optical wanding into inventory, and the automatic equipment requires specially designed packaging tubes and parts for taping for autoinsertion of PC components. Furthermore, the delivery of most JIT parts must be weekly (instead of usual monthly delivery), in order to maintain a minimum of inventory in the stockroom. Deliveries must be highly reliable to prevent stockouts and line shutdowns. The parts that Carl is considering resourcing are four integrated circuits (ICs), seven diodes, and three transistors. These parts are all low-cost, industry-standard parts, with the exception of five of the diodes, which are manufactured by only one company, Monitor Inc. Monitor is the industry leader in diodes and transistors and supplies Acacia with quality parts at competitive prices for other plotters. While the 440A was still in the design phase, Carl and the electrical engineers began preliminary

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