Leveraging flexible manufacturing to streamline new product launch processes

Johnson & Johnson Vision (JJV), manufacturer of the ACUVUE® Brand Contact Lenses, is committed to launching new contact lens products every year to maintain competitive edge and long-term relevancy. However, manufacturing lines currently operate at high utilization rates to satisfy steadily growing demand, limiting opportunity to beta test new products or validate manufacturing lines. Beta testing provides feedback on product design and manufacturability while validation qualifies a line to make a particular product at commercial scale - contributing to the more than 5 billion contact lenses produced by JJV yearly. To build manufacturing capacity and introduce flexibility into the system, JJV built the Flexible Manufacturing Platform (FMP). FMP is a modular manufacturing line capable of producing any contact lens in the JJV portfolio. This thesis explores how to strategically leverage FMP to enable quicker transitions from pilot-line production to commercial-scale production.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Robinson, Taylor K.(Taylor Kristyn)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Brian Anthony and Sean Willems.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Mechanical Engineering.
• Leaders for Global Operations Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/126916

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/126916