http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7710 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49792 Managing maintenance costs of pharmaceutical research and development Butts, Jared (Jared C.) Drug Discovery is a race to be the first to patent a drug that meets a significant medical need in the world. Many pharmaceutical companies are now using automation extensively to improve consistency and aid personnel in testing the millions of potential drug candidates within their labs. Because these machines play an important role in drug discovery, there is significant interest in managing their maintenance. The concern is that downtime is hampering the efforts of drug discovery. This project has sought to reduce that downtime and manage maintenance costs by working with the Technical Operations Group, Novartis' in-house maintenance team. The main objectives have been to devise a better way for evaluating maintenance contracts, improve the availability of the equipment, and instill a culture of continuous improvement in the group. This study shows that maximizing equipment utilization should be a higher priority than reducing downtime. The data show that the high throughput systems are only used an average of three days a week. Reducing downtime, which is most often measured on the scale of minutes, is unlikely to bring about the gains that would be realized by improving capacity utilization. Current metrics and data collection procedures are ineffective for determining automation needs and performance as well as engineer performance. A new system for data collection was implemented along with improvement projects as an introduction to lean principles, with the primary objective being a self-sustaining system of finding process improvements. (cont.) Contracts were evaluated along four criteria: the indispensability of the equipment under contract, the adjusted replacement cost, the level of customization, and the age of equipment. The end results of the internships include a metric gathering system that more closely monitors engineer activity as opposed to equipment activity, completed improvement projects such as the complete overhaul of the tool room including inventory management as well as an automated error log system, and a way of evaluating contracts that will reduce costs without sacrificing performance. Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66). http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49790 Balancing tax incentives with operational risks in captive overseas production facilities Chang, Audrey, M.B.A. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Due to the general macroeconomic downturn, many companies have turned to offshoring - sending a function overseas - to reduce production costs. While some companies elect to outsource overseas production to outside companies, many companies choose to keep production in-house and therefore create captive production facilities overseas. In many countries, the government will provide financial incentives (e.g. tax breaks, loans, subsidies) to certain companies in exchange for creating employment opportunities and industry knowledge within their borders. These financial incentives may tempt companies to shift more and more functions overseas; however, in many cases, there are significant operational risks involved with shifting functions overseas. This thesis uses a six-month project as a case study for discussing ways to weigh financial benefits against operational risks. The project was conducted at the European headquarters of Spirit AeroSystems, the largest independent designer and manufacturer of independent aerostructures for the commercial aircraft industry. Spirit Europe recently launched a greenfield factory in Malaysia. Malaysia was selected as the factory site for a variety of reasons; among which was a long term tax incentive. This thesis describes the process and tools used to select an optimal transfer pricing relationship (i.e. scope of work to be performed overseas) and transaction methodology that would best monetize the long-term tax incentive without incurring unacceptable levels of operational risk. (cont.) A comprehensive functional analysis was conducted to understand operational risk and economic value. Next, a Monte Carlo simulation was created to better understand project profitability. The results from the functional analysis and the Monte Carlo simulation are united to identify the optimal transfer pricing structure and methodology. The unintuitive result is that, for both operational and financial reasons, the scope of work transferred to the low tax jurisdiction (in this case, Spirit Malaysia) should be fairly limited for existing contracts. Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-94). http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49789 Developing a methodology to link printed circuit board assembly yield targets to commodity group quality goals Cauthen, Jason Wessing The increasing complexity of high-end routing products, a highly diverse product mix, and continually demanding quality requirements have intensified the challenges faced by Cisco. Primary among these is managing the broad array of suppliers to ensure that the parts they are delivering meet the quality needs of the end product while balancing this with the need to remain cost competitive. Because components are often used across many product lines, it is can be difficult to determine exactly how an improvement to the quality of an individual component will impact Cisco's overall yield metrics. This thesis establishes a methodology for linking component quality to assembly-level yields. The component level quality is measured in Defective Parts Per Million (DPPM) at the Commodity Group level, and PCBA Yield is measured as the percentage of boards which meet Cisco's Six Sigma yield targets. The proof of concept for such an analytical link shows that these two metrics can be analytically related, and furthermore can be used to ensure that the effort expended to improve DPPM is optimally targeted to have an impact on assembly-level yields. Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-63). http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49788 An effective approach to choosing project, program and portfolio management software at a large and geographically diverse company Brost, Missy M. (Missy Marie) Selecting and deploying an IT tool can be very complicated and expensive. This paper studies a particular approach to choosing project, program and portfolio management software at one large and geographically diverse company in the Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry, Voltaform. Though there are many ways to approach this task, significant thought should go into which one is chosen for each particular company and its situation. This document addresses the approach taken at VoltaForm as well as the reasoning behind it. It describes developing a business case focused on end user needs for the new software, including the detailed data analysis techniques used to evaluate the end user needs. It also describes certain aspects of the deployment of the software once chosen. The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance and examples for anyone faced with a similar task. Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-77).