Re-sourcing manufacturing processes in metal forming operations

Deciding which activities to conduct in-house and which to outsource has become increasingly important due to its implications on a company's supply chain and overall business model. A number of factors can lead a company to outsource manufacturing processes. As a result of this outsourcing, the supply chain can become very complex and overwhelming to manage. This thesis will analyze this situation from the perspective of one manufacturer, American Axle and Manufacturing, Inc. (AAM). AAM's Metal Formed Products (MFP) Division currently has a number of challenges: rising steel prices, fixed labor costs and declining sales. All these factors have significantly impacted profitability, forcing senior management to take a comprehensive look at the division and consider developing a plan to improve divisional operations. As a part of this plan, MFP Division's senior management asked for a thorough look into all of the manufacturing processes performed by the division both internally and by outside suppliers. In addition to identifying the processes and suppliers, senior management sought to highlight opportunities for improving the process flow through the re-sourcing of manufacturing processes. This project develops a framework to analyze and evaluate these re-sourcing decisions. This framework employs a five-step approach and incorporates a number of diverse analytical tools. Process flow mapping provided a tool to visually highlight the best opportunities to resource. In addition to a visual representation, process flow mapping also provided the data to financially evaluate alternatives. Strategic and market factors were identified in order to target and prioritize re-sourcing efforts.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Holtz, Heath M. (Heath Mikal)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Thomas W. Eagar and Stephen C. Graves.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Engineering Systems Division.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

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

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34859

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34859