American Greetings: New Beginning

American Greetings: New Beginning

Team AI: Will Cheesman- Innovation and CreativityNakul Rajaram- Project Management Andrew Schuch- Technical Contributions Rohit Awade- Communications

BackgroundThey are the largest greeting card company in the United States.Greeting Cards are printed in their Bardstown, Kentucky factory.Also own Carlton Cards, Tender Thoughts, Just For You, and Gibson Greeting Cards.

About Bardstown FacilityTheir manufacturing facility is 100,800 sq ft.Factory has three main processes die-cut, thermo, and packaging.Work in progress sections fill in the rest of the floor plan.

Statement of NeedAnalyze floor plan and improve material handling.Identify bottlenecks in process.Decrease work in progress area.Improve overall efficiency of the plant.Cost justify all alternative solutions.

Interesting FactsThe plant manufacture 250,000,000 thermographic cards per year.American Greetings recently overtook Hallmark to be the biggest greeting card manufacturer in the world.

Project Management

Gantt Chart

ProcessAll the sheets get a Hot-Press and Die-Cut Manually transported to WIPMoves from WIP to Thermographic Card PressManually transported to WIPCarted to Packaging Lines for final step

Floor Plan

Approach: WorkflowModeled the entire process on Arena.

Based on drawings and data gathered, made the arena model of the plant.

Identified thermo machines as bottleneck.

Approach: CartsIdentified remodeling of old carts as an area to improve functionality.Make carts more ergonomically efficient.Improve carts to reduce cycle time.Increase the volume, reduce WIP.Reduce potential for injuries.

Ergonomic ImprovementUse cost effective carts with electric scissor lifts attached to bottom of skids.Adjustable work station to keep materials at a comfortable height.Angled handlebars for smaller risk of injury, along with less effort required.

Expected Results: CartReducing the area utilized by Work In Progress(WIP) inventory.With the larger cart volume, each new cart can about one and a half old carts.This would save over 346 square feet of WIP area across the plant.

Expected Results: CartNew cart has 52 % more volume.66:100 ratio new to old cartsThis ratio leads to annual savings of $140,646.28

Expected Result: ThermoBottleneck in the Thermo section of the plant3 Heidelberg (New)5 Davidson (Old)New Heidelberg will increase production and reduce the wait time for the process

Add Heidelberg (70,000 cards/shift)Remove 2 Davidsons (30,000 cards/shift)Wait time reduced by 24%Overall throughput increased by 14%

Expected Result: Thermo

RecommendationsConvert all old carts to our new design.Purchase a new heidelberg thermo machine.New Electric scissor lift cart

ConclusionGot to experience first hand the inner working of a manufacturing unitLearnt the importance of a team in real life situationsCommunicating and working with real clients

Thank you!

Contact Email: nrajaram@purdue.edu