Poster

Client Context

Polygon Company of Walkerton, Indiana, designs and creates specialized composite tubes for a variety of applications. Although Polygon consists of five divisions, the Advanced Tubing division is the company’s most immediate concern and the focus of the project. The Advanced Tubing division, consisting of tubes 6” or larger in diameter, recently experienced an unanticipated surge of orders that the production schedule and labor force could not accommodate. This event forced Polygon to end relationships with many lower-volume customers and generated concern since Polygon’s marketing experts project this division to be the largest area of forecasted growth in Polygon’s five-year plan. The Advanced Tubing division has the opportunity to increase capacity to handle greater order volumes without capital investments by more efficiently utilizing current equipment and labor.

Project Objective

Polygon had two primary obstacles to increasing efficiency: a lack of automated processes and data to understand its own system. During production, no real-time data is tracked as each portion is completed, leaving capacity to be estimated by management. An opportunity exists to discover bottlenecks in the current process by data-driven capacity evaluation. In addition, each week employees manually create a schedule that could be auto-generated. Another opportunity to decrease overall manufacturing time is considering more constraints that impact process time when sequencing jobs.

Design Strategy

The solution involves two main deliverables-- a simulation and a sequencing tool-- encompassing two goals: understanding maximized capacity and improving current capacity. The simulation evaluates the true capacity of the current system with pre-existing equipment and labor resources, determining utilization and bottlenecks. Similar production times for historical orders times and job lengths determined by the simulation model allow model validation. In addition, a more automated sequencing tool improves the current throughput potential by releasing a schedule of jobs that considers resin waste, resin changeover time, and machine utilization in addition to due date. A robustness test ensures that the sequence provides a reliable job release order despite stochastic processing times. This tool also saves manual creation time. Running the sequencing tool output through the simulation model allows calculation of expected finish time and saved production hours.

Deliverables

The deliverables have been prepared to smoothly transfer to management for long-term use. They create more standardized processes and allow greater understanding of the system based on data rather than non-transferrable employee experience. A user guide outlining instructions to adapt the sequencing tool code allows Polygon to apply the tool to a changing factory floor as well as other divisions within the company. The sequencing tool outputs the code to an Excel spreadsheet that resembles the schedule employees currently use. In addition, Polygon may adapt and utilize the simulation in the other four company divisions with the accompanying instructions. Additionally, a summary of the time study and recommendations on improving system bottlenecks allow the company to initiate its own improvement projects with issues highlighted from this project.

Project Information

Spring 2020
Polygon Company

Student Team

Rebecca Brannen
James Hauth
Emily Nizialek
Anand Sarathy
Alexander Stevens
David Wright

Faculty Advisor

Faculty Evaluator