Universidad Católica Boliviana "San Pablo"

PROJECT SYNTHESIS “Fábrica de Hielo Oriental S.R.L.” is a company dedicated to the production, commercialization and distribution of ice in its different presentations. It has 2 main production lines: ice bars and cubed ice. The present degree project is developed in the bar ice production line, from which 3 products are obtained: Bar of 25 [Kg], Bar of 6 [Kg] and Crushed bar. Currently, the production methods and production planning methods, that are used for the production of these SKUs, generate low rates of utilization of the available direct labor capacity, generating downtime for the staff, increasing production costs and reducing productivity. For this reason, the project proposes to design new production and production planning methods, using method engineering tools and chase strategy from aggregate planning. To achieve the objective, first of all it was carried out a diagnosis of the current production and production planning methods, using tools such as observational data recording, a time study and process diagrams. With regard to the production method, this diagnosis made it possible to identify the bottleneck and, therefore, the cycle time for each of the processes analyzed, as well as the number of operators per workstation. On the other hand, with regard to the planning method, the diagnosis revealed the shortcomings of each of the stages of a production planning system. With the results of the diagnosis, an improvement proposal was prepared for the production and production planning methods. The proposal for the production method consists of redesigning the workstation and acquiring equipment to reduce the cycle time of the production process. On the other hand, the improvement proposal for the planning method is based on the use of demand projection techniques to reduce errors, a direct labor planning strategy that represents a lower cost for the company and methods for aggregate planning of resources and capacities in the work centers.