This paper reviews the case study of a plywood manufacturing company that intends to address the issues that arise during its log peeling operations. The business production process involves wood soaking, preparing the wood chunks, and laminating the logs with a cheap knife blade. The company faces the challenge of maintaining a single thickness of the lamination peeling. This study identifies and discusses four variables that affect the business processes. These four variables include the knife set, the knife pressure, the temperature of the water the logs are soaked in, and the soak time. The first part of this study designs an experiment considering all the four variables that will help the engineers understand how each variable independently affects the business production process.
The Variables
The first part of the experiment aims to standardize all the variables that affect the production process. All the mentioned variables are further discussed below.
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Soak Time . The production process begins with soaking the logs. The optimum recommended soak time for the logs is 60 minutes. The business lacks control for this variable and sometimes soaks the woods for 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes. The soaking process mainly aims to soften the wood to ease the lamination process. This variable must therefore be well monitored to ensure optimally soaked wood for an effective lamination process.
Bath Temperature. The temperature of the bath is another variable that significantly affects wood processing. The recommended bath temperature is between 150-200 degrees. Other outlining factors that affect the bath temperature, such as the number of logs dipped in the bah at a given time, have to be considered ( Shamsdini et al, 2020 ). Dipping more logs together in the bath cools it faster. It is also essential to note that the variation of the bath temperature is enormous (Dowling et al., 2020). The difference between the highest and the lowest bath temperatures should be 20 degrees at most.
Knife Pressure. The company recommends an optimum knife pressure of 250-300 psi. Some of the variables that affect the effectiveness of the knives include the knife placement and how long the knife has been used after sharpening. The more time a knife is used after sharpening, the more it becomes dull and the less effective it turns. The positioning of the knife also has to be monitored continuously. The knife pressure needs to be altered to account for the change in the other variables. When the soak time is maximum at 60 minutes and the bath temperature is 200 degrees, better-quality lamentation is achieved at the same pressure as when there is less soak time and lower bath temperature.
Knife Setting. The knife set includes the shapes, angles, sizes, and depths. Less wood would be cut by a knife that is far steeper than it should be. The knives should be constantly tightened and fixed into positions to enable consistent lamentation results. All the blades should also be replaced or sharpened regularly.
The Experiment
For this experiment, all the variables are measured in a controlled environment. This experiment makes the following assumptions;
All logs are of equal sizes and shapes.
The standard soak time is set to 60 minutes.
The exact number of logs is loaded into the bath every time.
All the four variables identified by the study are set at optimum, with minor variations. The variations are monitored and recorded. The recorded data is compared to understand how the variables affect the process.
The Concept of Repeatable Work
I would poorly rate this company of the concept of repeatable work. The company does not consistently repeat the production process in controlled environments to understand the variables. I would recommend that the company standardizes the production process (Dowling et al., 2020). All the variables should be monitored, and a deeper understanding of how each process is drawn.
Repeatable processes are essential; they allow the company to measure the variables and determine the challenges that might occur due to the change in a single variable. The company can then effectively plan to address and improve the process.
References
Dowling, L., Kennedy, J., O'shaughnessy, S., & Trimble, D. (2020). A review of critical repeatability and reproducibility issues in powder bed fusion. Materials & Design , 186 , 108346.
Shamsdini, S., Shakerin, S., Hadadzadeh, A., Amirkhiz, B. S., & Mohammadi, M. (2020). A trade-off between powder layer thickness and mechanical properties in additively manufactured maraging steels. Materials Science and Engineering: A , 776 , 139041.
