Product/process design and optimization is typically aimed at manufacturing a single product for a single customer, and often leads to underutilization of the available production capacity. Thus it is reasonable for a manufacturer to make an effort to minimize or eliminate that excess capacity to achieve high effectiveness. Excess capacity can be allocated by running multiple products/processes design and optimization independently of the first. However, exploring possible synergies between the two (or more) products/processes may bring even higher benefits. This paper presents a case where a manufacturing process (plastic blow molding) was shared between two different products for two different customers with two different sets of needs. These customer needs were mapped into core value-creating processes, recognizing both the differences in their requirements as well as the similarities in their expectations. Conflicting differences in production volumes and quality requirements were reconciled leading to higher customer satisfaction and improved cost performance. That was achieved by using an innovative approach in applying Quality Function Deployment (QFD) simultaneously to both sets of customer requirements, analysis of synergies and conflicts within each and also between the two. The goal was to find the common operating range to fulfill entirely both sets of customer expectations, under assumption that an overlap existed. The effort focused on processes for two products: C1 and C2, where the challenges included: (i) strong process coupling (over 60%), (ii) product differences (in terms of feature complexity, production volumes, cycle times, and quality requirements). Application of the proposed approach resulted in a revised production line layout, which led to reduced scrap rates (below 1%) and increased production rate (by 24%).
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