Case study

Current situation:

You are the production engineer of a medium-size bakery factory. Currently, there are three semi-automated production lines for 3 types of baked products (flat/pita bread, toast bread, cakes). Each type of bread comes in different varieties (white, wholemeal and multigrain bread). Due to the semi- manual production process in producing the baked goods, the production lines require a large number of operational staff to move the products along the different stages of the production process. Additionally, several quality and inconsistency issues happen that affect the quality of the breads. A noticeable share of the raw material ends up being damaged or wasted due to the semi-manual processing of the operational staff along the production lines. Furthermore, the productivity and outputs of the production lines are sometimes inconsistent and inefficient due to the multiple tasks that each staff member performs as well as the lack of having a systematic approach in the production process. Your factory sells the products to a large number of supermarkets and businesses in different major cities.

New situation:

The factory management decided to expand the production output of the factory due to increasing demand for baked goods in the Western Region as well as expansion plans to sell products to customers in more cities. Additionally, the factory management decided to look for operational and technological approaches and improvements that enable automating the production process, reducing the number of operational staff, reducing the operational costs and increasing the productivity of the factory. It is expected that the production output of the factory to be increased by 80-120%.

Task: Youre are required to review the current production practices and apply necessary improvements to automate and enhance the production process of the factory in order to increase the productivity of the production process and reduce the production costs. You can make any logical assumptions and constraints in your suggested solution as long as you fully describe them and provide a good rationale for them.

In terms of only this change: Production technologies and systems to automate and enhance the productivity of the factory.

Please link any references for any ideas regarding the solutions/improvements