Determining the optimal departmental resource allocation at Wispeco Aluminium

Abstract

Wispeco Aluminium’s Profiling department is used for the production of the aluminium profiles that Wispeco sells to its’ customers nationwide. The production at this department is achieved through the usage of five extrusion machines (EP1-EP5) that run continuously throughout a working shift. The continuous running of these machines is what Wispeco would like to maintain as any stoppage of the machines results in financial losses for the company, an estimated loss of R25248 per hour per machine was highlighted. This figure was calculated using the average production quantity per machine (789kg/hr.) multiplied by the price per kilogram (R32/kg) of aluminium. The only reason that causes the machines to be stopped from running is when there is a shortage of skips within this department. A skip is a material handling component that needs to be readily available next to the extrusion machines after the production of the aluminium profiles by the machines. The problem for this project was to ensure that there is always an availability of skips next to each extrusion machine and therefore the continuous running of the machines can be maintained, of which a total number of 2720 skips is available within the company and is shared by four departments including the Profiling department. The other three departments are Powder coating, Anodizing and Gauteng Stockists (warehouse). To get a clear understanding of the problem, a time study for a single shift (6am-6pm) was performed with the results thereof used as input data to a simulation model using Simio software. The results of the simulation model gave an indication of the instantaneous production quantities for every machine and hence gave an indication of the number of skips needed per machine per production batch. The remaining number of skips was allocated to the remaining three departments based on the average number of skips needed per department, this number was achieved using the daily skip counts performed at each department.