PROCESS DESIGN FOR RIORDAN MANUFACTURING

Process Design for Riordan Manufacturing

Process Design for Riordan Manufacturing

Riordan Manufacturing, Inc. is a subsidiary of Riordan Industries, a Fortune 1000 company. Riordan Manufacturing Incorporated, a Fortune 1000 company, is an industry leader in the field of plastic injection molding technology. Founded in 1991 by Dr. Riordan, the company has expanded operations in both the United States and China. The company has projected annual earning of $46 million and has revenues in excess of $1 billion (Lensong 2004).

Riordan Electric Fans

Riordan Manufacturing is a plastics manufacturer employing 550 people with projected annual earnings of $46 million.” (Riordan, 2004) The company headquarters is located in San Jose, California and production sites within Pontiac, Michigan and Albany, Georgia. The Michigan location is responsible for the injection molding process, creating of dies, custom fabrication, design and colouring of plastics (Brunkhorst Sloat 2008). The Georgia site creates unique plastic bottles as specified by the customer.

Riordan expanded their production and design of electric fans to an overseas operation plant that partnered with Hangzhou, China. Plastic polymers are purchased locally and melted/injected into molds that creates the individual plastic parts. This project is designed to support several of Riordan's strategic initiatives, including (1) develop JIT process for components required for the custom plastic fabrication (Pontiac Plant), (2) obtain a 99% on-time delivery of electric fans from local Chinese supplier and reduce safety stock requirements on polymer material, (3) deliver user friendly tools which enable organization to integrate ERP and MRP systems across the entire global enterprise, and (4) develop ERP and MRP processes and tools that reduce cost by 10% and cycle time by 15% (Normile 2001).

Production of the Riordan Electric Fans

For each item in Riordan's materials ordering system there will be one or more vendors for the item, including a history of previous orders of that item from that vendor. These histories will include a rating of the quality of materials, cost at quantity, speed of delivery and similar factors necessary for a making a decision regarding which vendor to rely upon. Once a selection is made a link takes the buyer to the vendor's website and depending on the interface, may log onto the vendor's site and take the buyer directly to the page to complete the order (Strugatch 1999). Note that the purpose of this database is to facilitate Riordan's ordering of materials from other companies. The database does not contain the products that Riordan sells to its own customers.

Supply Chain

Riordan's business-to-business database will be a valuable asset that needs to be protected for accidental or intentional problems. The database will be backed up in full each night and transaction log backups will run each hour according to industry stand time schedules. The database backup files and transaction log backup files will be stored on a separate file server until they are backed up to tape nightly. The backup tapes will be encrypted and stored off-site. The systems administrator will automatically be paged if a nightly backup ...