Fhe, Inc

...

better manage the work-load of the engineering services department, it is important to create a specific schedule for future new-product projects and forecasted engineering services needed. This will help determine ahead the services needed from the engineer and allow the department manager plan out its man-hour allocation. Thus, minimize, if not eliminate, bottleneck situations within the engineering department. It will also be helpful that each product development cycle must be done within an acceptable development cycle. This way, it can avoid unnecessarily engaging engineering hours to an otherwise unfeasible product. To better implement this, the a representative of the engineering department must continue to be part of the product development team.

Adopting the CAD-CAM system will allow cost and time savings in designing the product. The use of CAD will translate to cost savings from the reduction in the product’s development cycle. Manual processes in the design will be eliminated and replaced by a faster, automated, and more accurate computer-operated design system. After the design is completed, instructions for manufacturing will now be fed into its manufacturing equipment that is directed and controlled by the computer-assisted manufacturing (CAM) system. As the equipment operate according to the CAD instructions fed to it, fewer defective units are produced, thus, resulting to lesser spoilage.

IV. Summary and Conclusion

To resolve the issues currently encountered by FHE, Inc., it must establish a cross-functional team to fine-tune its product development system. In addition, each member’s role and objective must be clearly defined to reduce ambiguity. It must include manufacturing department during product development. To avoid bottlenecks, a new and specific schedule drawn up for services needed from engineering must be observed. Lastly, FHE must continue with its plan to implement a new CAM-CAD system that will reduce product development cycle and reduce production of defective units.

V. Recommendation

FHE, Inc.’s new product development team will now constitute the Product Manager, Engineering Manager and Manufacturing Manager to represent the marketing, engineering, and manufacturing departments, respectively. Mr. Donaldson can continue to be a product development manager, and the rest may have a dotted line connection to him. A clearly spelled-out role and objective must be drawn for each member of the team, and this must be incorporated in their respective job description.

During the course of product development, a strong communication system must be established within the organization by implementing a weekly managers meeting and discuss the updates of each product development process.

FHE, Inc. must implement the CAD-CAM System to speed-up product introduction and eliminate its current production problems.

After each product is deployed for full production and offered to the market, the product manager who is part of the product’s development must be on top of a periodic examination of each product to determine the appropriate strategies for such product as it move though its product life cycles.

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