Mitigating the impact of a time-dependent production process

Value-added processes that bear associated wait times occur frequently during production manufacturing and increase cycle time. Since the wait time is integral to the value created by the process, it can be difficult to reduce the cycle time impact. The use of adhesives and the impact of their associated cure times is an example of such a time-dependent process and one that appears frequently on products made at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems (SAS). Using a typical Raytheon pod system (RPS) as a case study, this thesis examines various ways to mitigate the impact of these value-added associated wait times (VAAWT) on cycle time. Adhesives with long cure and/or set times are used extensively throughout the design of this RPS in both structural and non-structural applications. Now that the RPS is well into full-rate production, the cycle time impact of these adhesives' VAAWT has become a burden, accounting for over 60% of the cycle time on the three assemblies studied on during the case study. Both short-term and long-term solutions were developed as a result of this project, which enabled a 23% reduction in cycle time exclusive of changes in design.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Manufacturing.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Dudnik, Sara A

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Roy Welsch and David Hardt.

• Engineering Systems Division.
• Sloan School of Manufacturing.
• 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/1721.1/39330

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39330