January 12, 2024
At Mizzou Engineering, we encourage our students to constantly question reality to motivate them to design a better world. And we continually provide our students with hands-on learning opportunities. That's why capstone courses, which allow students to apply concepts learned in class, are an important pillar of our curriculum.
Industrial engineering students work with clients to develop solutions to engineering problems. This fall, Capstone Group was assigned to work with American Air Filters (AAF) to reconfigure the production layout for one of the company's products. They documented their projects and processes and presented another example of how a Mizzou Engineering education prepares students for their careers.
project
The Capstone Group's efforts centered around two goals. First, AAF is introducing new equipment to crimp larger sheet metal rolls, and the new machine will extend 21 feet longer into the workspace than the current machine. For this reason, the Capstone team used production engineering principles to reallocate other equipment and materials to make room for the new crimper without negatively impacting worker efficiency or safety. Did.
When Capstone's group visited the facility, they discovered that significant floor space was used to store pallets of raw materials. This led to his second goal for Capstone Group: developing a space-saving inventory management system.
process
To successfully complete the project, the team must maintain safe walkways and ergonomic workspaces, maintain or reduce travel distance per product, and maintain or increase production rates while building a 735-square-foot Equipment and workspace had to be reallocated.
RJ Morrison explains, “Here's a step-by-step guide through the production process. From the crimping machine, the material is fed into a folder, where the folded and crimped filter heads to an assembly table before traveling through the rest of the factory.'' and slowly pushed out.” Moving the crimper affects the space to the assembly table. ”
After coming up with the proposed solution, the team traveled to AAF in Colombia to conduct Kaizen testing. In this test, the company and its employees spent one day implementing the new layout of their workspaces and sharing their feedback.
“Many of the changes made involved removing unnecessary equipment or moving equipment to more suitable spaces,” says Jack Christian.
The team used a racking system to solve inventory management problems.
“What we were trying to create with these racks is a new way to organize all the parts into different spaces,” says Michael Talarico. “This improves both the ergonomics of having to bend down inside the box to pick up parts, and it also makes finding parts much easier than having them separated in boxes with different labels. It becomes easier.”
Kaizen testing also tested different sizes of racks for storing inventory based on what was most convenient for workers to use and move while holding supplies for two to seven days.
result
Based on Kaizen testing of the new layout and calculations by the team, the proposed layout solution included an 11% reduction in worker distance per product and an 18% reduction in layout density. The racking system was also considered beneficial for production, and the team recommended his four 24-inch shelves per work shift. And all of the proposed changes led to a statistically safer working environment.
“We increased throughput by reducing material travel distances and reduced safety risks by making various ergonomic improvements,” said Brennan Kieger. “We are proud of the work we have done.”
Discover Industrial Engineering at Mizzou!
