NASA Production Center Process Improvements
Client: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Team: Chris Genda, Loan Ngoyen, Valerie Vlahos, John Williams
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr Year: 1997
Documents: Final presentation
The present operations procedures used by the NASA Manufacturing Division has room for improvement in the following areas: information accuracy within the INFISY system and tracking machine downtime, departmental communication, job scheduling at each work center, and estimating job cost and completion time. Due to the combined errors and problems mentioned within the Division, several effects are obvious.
The inaccurate use of the INFISY system has led to an incomplete historical data set, which has greatly affected the forecasting of completion times of jobs. This is apparent in the very large negative variances (actual-estimated time). The high percentages of those not logged out on INFISY have led to part mislocation. Job scheduling is difficult without tracking intermediate completion dates. Not monitoring machine down time leads to possible higher repair costs than sometimes purchasing a new machine. Under the current use and application of the INFISY software, job scheduling and forecasting are not optimized as needed. Addressing these issues gradually will improve the production operation.
We recommend that all Division members to properly use the INFISY software so that all data is accurately and completely collected. This is a temporary solution to modifying the existing system or switching to an optimizing system.
This report identifies possible solutions to the current situation. The data is compiled from interviews conducted with engineers, planners, technicians, and quality assurance; a ten month period of router sheets, a three month period of machine repair reports; and a Master Work Center Load document. All of this information is used to create statistical math models and graphs. These models include a Heuristic Job Schedule, an Estimated Part Forecast Method and an analysis of the Machine Shop Layout.