Ashoka Air

Ashoka Air (AA), a medium scale company, manufactures fans and sells it through various distributors
and retailers located across MP. The company’s product mix comprises of some major product lines with
several variants within each line. The major product line that are manufactured in a single production
facility at Pitampur includes Wall fans, Table fan, Ceiling fans, Exhaust fan, Cooler Fan, Cooler motor
assembly etc. The variation within each product line is due to size and special features such as final
design, aesthetics, color etc. Hence, total no of stock keeping units (SKUs) run into hundreds of finished
products. Final assembly of each fan includes various components which are procured from different
vendors. The figure 1 shows the exiting layout of the Ashok Air. One of the critical component required in
the final fan assembly i.e. motor subassembly is produced in the motor assembly unit.

In the motor assembly unit, motor is assembled using various components i.e. top cover, bottom cover,
rotor, stator winding, shaft and bearings or bushes etc. which changes as per variant. The components
used in motor subassembly varies and decided by the size, features and type of fan (i.e. Table, ceiling
etc.). Many of these components are procured from various suppliers. The layout of motor assembly is
shown in figure 2 where the various stages of assembly process are grouped together. All the motor
subassemblies passes through the same facility in large batches as per advanced planning and routing.

Mr Ashok, Vice President of the AA, was extremely concerned about the growing cost of holding
inventory in the facility and was looking for innovative ways to reduce inventory while improving
customer service level and without sacrificing operations flexibility. In the recent meeting with the
managers, Mr Ashok specially asked Mr Raghvan, production manager of “Motor Assembly Unit” to
reorganize the current facility with appropriate changes in layout to streamline product flow. Further,
he suggested him to work on ceiling fan motor assembly as an experiment. The recent trend in fan
industry seemed to be dynamic and volatile. Mr Ashok would preferably like a configuration capable
of handling volumes in the range of 300 - 800 units per shift specially for ceiling fans.

Mr Raghvan, MBA graduate, felt that assembly line would have made sense if AA have been
manufacturing very few standardized products. However, large number of variant made it difficult to
form the dedicated line with possibility of losing operational flexibility. Based on his learning from
operations course, Mr. Raghvan felt very strongly that a cellular manufacturing would be more
appropriate for such a volatile environment while addressing large varieties. The typical flow of ceiling
motor assembly batch on 5 Sept is shown in Figure 2 and described in Table 1. The batch of motor
assembly moves through various stages by assigning it to the next available workstation. Workstation
uses pneumatic system for holding products. However, some changes are required in fixtures of
workstation while shifting major product line. All the workstations are manually operated.

One of the change that Mr Raghavan thought that can be made was in “winding inspection”. Some
automation was possible to reduce manual intervention. This automation would permit inspection
operations to be performed without operator supervision for 30 second, thus allowing the operator to
attend to other tasks in the cell. In this case, Operator only works for first 12 second and leave the
product to be inspected for another 30 second automatically. Assume 8 hours shift.

Now, Mr Raghvan was wondering about the possibility of cell formation for Ceiling Motor Assembly.

1. Determine the number of workers required and the corresponding task assignment for achieving
a production rate of 650 units per shift in case of assembly line w/o automation. Assume that a
worker can be trained in more than one key task.
 2. Consider a cell design for ceiling Motor assembly with one operator. What is the resulting
capacity? Consider automation
3. How would the cell operate with two workers assigned to the cell? What is the corresponding
capacity? Consider automation
4. Repeat 3 with three workers assigned to the cell. Consider automation

Table 1: Typical Operations of Ceiling Motor Assembly (5th Sep)

Code Workstation Key Task Task Description Task Time

No. (seconds)
C1 SA3 Stator assembly Winding, shaft and bearings are 12
attached
C2 SB4 Stator and Bottom Stator assembly is fitted in 24
Cover assembly bottom cover
C3 WI6 Winding The some readings are taken to 42
inspection ascertain quality of winding
C4 RA2 Rotor assembly Rotor is attached to Stator 15
C5 TC5 Top Cover Top cover is attached to above 10
Assembly assembly
C6 FI4 Final inspection Final testing 10

Figure 1: Shop Floor Layout

Raw Final Assembly of Finished

material Motor Assembly Unit Fan Goods

Figure 2: Motor Assembly Unit

Winding inspection (WI) Stator assembly (SA) Stator and bottom cover
assembly (SB)
3

4
6

Rotor assembly (RA) Top cover assembly (TC) Final inspections (FI)
2 5 4

Plastic accessories assembly Winding covering process Special packaging stations

Note: Set up required at workstation while changing the major product line