Date of Defense
12-6-2022
Date of Graduation
12-2022
Department
Industrial and Entrepreneurial Engineering and Engineering Management
First Advisor
Jim Burns
Second Advisor
Dana Hammond
Third Advisor
Lee Wells
Abstract
Landscape Forms is a high-end outdoor furniture company. This thesis was completed at the Landscape Forms woodshop located in Kalamazoo, MI. Landscape Forms initially reached out regarding their CNC machines being the bottleneck and it was determined that the current product standards and capacity of the CNC machines at Landscape Forms were not accurate. This causes issues when planning and scheduling their incoming orders. During this thesis, two tools were developed over the course of two semesters. The first tool helped to create accurate product standards for their CNC machines depending on the different product types and second, a CNC capacity model. The production time estimation tool incorporated operation times such as operator load and unload time and product characteristics such as the board dimensions in order to estimate a total production time for a demanded number of units. The CNC capacity model then takes the total time of the units demanded and helps Landscape Forms visualize and plan out their CNC machining schedules while incorporating constraints such as planned downtime. Both of these tools will allow Landscape Forms to more accurately plan and schedule how much workload is put into the CNC machines at any given time. A project timeline was created laying out the steps to follow to complete this plan. Data collection, time studies, and an ergonomic analysis were performed to gather information on the various products and the cycle times needed to produce those products. Using this data, the models were built and then verified to determine the accuracy of these tools. The models were compared to time studies that were collected at Landscape Forms and a percentage error was calculated. After the tools were designed and verified, they were given to the sponsor, Landscape Forms, along with recommendations on how to improve the accuracy of the tools over time.
Recommended Citation
Bluhm, Kaitlin, "Understanding CNC Capacity Through Production Time Estimation" (2022). Honors Theses. 3596.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/honors_theses/3596
Access Setting
Honors Thesis-Open Access
Comments
Co-authored with:
Patrick Shoemaker
Vyacheslav Vorobyov