ISEN $255$ Assignment for ABET Outcome $2"$An ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety and welfare as well as global, social, environmental, and economic issues"

This problem assumes you have taken on a position as Corporate Industrial Engineering Manager for a multi$-$ national chemical manufacturer. You have facilities in the United States, India, and China. You are responsible for the efficient operations in all of the facilities. The first month you spend traveling to each of the facilities and you develop a list of major issues by Plant. Your next step is to develop a process that you will implement by location as well as an "estimated cost$/$ benefit analysis in any situation where you need to spend capital. Listed below is a plant by plant recap.

Listed below is what you learn in your $1^{st}$ month of visits

USA

This is the company headquarters and most state of the art manufacturing facility. This plant provides high paying jobs for over $2000$ blue collar workers as well as $500$ white collar employees. There is real pressure on this plant to become more profitable. In addition if this plant is to remain compliant with California law it will have to spend $$30,000,000$ on updating their waste stream reclaiming system. Short of doing this capital investment, the manufacturing would have to be moved to one of the other facilities or split between the other two facilities. The cost to move the equipment to either plant would be about $$6,000,000$ or if it was split it would cost about $$4,000,000$ at each facility. In addition to moving the equipment, there would be about a six month interruption of production that would have to be compensated by a build $-$up of inventory which would create an additional carrying charge of $$3,000,000.$

China

China has been growing in the last $5$ years as any job that cannot meet California law has been moved here. In addition labor cost on an hourly basis is about $25\%$ of California labor. However not all is well in China as the company has been producing a very hazardous chemical in this plant for almost $20$ years