Carrer Episode

CAREER EPISODE – 3

a) Introduction

1. In this narrative, I shall describe an engineering task which I undertook during final year of my engineering program. This episode took place from January till December, 2000 at NED University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi. I was working as a group member on a project “To Design a Manufacturing System, CAM / Automation / Assembly Lines” for automobile industry. The company, we worked for was Hino-Pak Motors, a leading manufacturer for heavy vehicles in Pakistan.

b) Background

2. The real reasons, some companies are achieving superior manufacturing status are becoming increasingly clear as success stories all around the globe proliferate due to the role of automation which helps them in growing their production and improving their quality. The task was based on the implementation of Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Automation techniques, if feasible, for continuous improvement and to increase the productivity.

3. As a group of four students, the over all engineering task was divided equally. Out of four, one had to design a cheap automated material handling equipment, introducing CAM concepts, their implementation and suggestion for best possible computer aided technology to increase productivity and also to calculate the cost associated to CAM technologies. The detailed study and all calculations to design an automated assembly line to make comparison with manual assembly lines were done by second member of our group. Though I was also involved in other activities while working on this engineering task but I had to emphasize on my area which was the detailed study of manual assembly lines and to solve the problems came through for the designated areas, which required detailed analysis for the implementation of automation techniques. The analysis required method study, work measurement and time study. While the last member of the group was responsible for developing a soft-ware on Visual Basic which...