Question

You are a production analyst at a firm that makes a high-quality radiosotope 7-topel for medical use. It s quite expensive to manufacture and has a short shelf ife. A 10-ounce 2-tope package can serve up to four patients ifit is used within the expiration date. Out of date the product is discarded as hazardous waste Currently,you manufacture Z-tope on mechanical equipment. Recognizing that variability existsin manufacturing, product legislation requires that your 10-ounce package of Z-tope contain at least 995 ercent of the stated weight, at least 95 percent of the time. Your current manufacturing processis set or a mean fill ate of 10 ounces,which results in 95 percent of your 2-tope packages meeting the 0.5 ercent variation cutoff ast week your company took delivery ofa new state of the art packaging machine,which replaces the mechanical iller component with a lasercontrolled unit. The result is that the variablity in packagingi now virtually zero. With this new equipment,you have determined that you can now fill to a mean weight of 996 oz. And still net legal requirements,even with a stated package weight of 10 ounces Your supervisor congratulates you on the analysis. He directs you to lower the fill weight to 9.96 oo the production machines to save material cost What is your response?

Answer 1

First of all, in an ideal situation, we could possibly lower the fill rate to 9.96 ounces. However, for this we need to make sure that there is absolutely 0 variability. I know that the current new product has improved the process and the case states that there is virtually 0 variability. However, in practical sense this may not always be true.

Considering that we are dealing with an expensive product it does make business sense to remain just above the required quantity in order to save time. However, we need to be sure that there is absolutely no variability. For that, I will recommend observing the new process for several weeks and collecting reading to check if the variability is still 0. If that is the case then we can change the fill rate to 9.96. At this point, we should keep it at 10 ounces.