Increasing Capacity by Designing a New Drying Process at a Manufacturing Plant

Abstract

Abstract ⎯ High oil price is one of the major factors for this twenty-first century global economic recession. Inevitably everyone’s mindset has changed towards energy and the focus is towards finding renewable energy that result in satisfactory substitutes like solar energy has proven to be. For the past years, established manufacturers for solar panels have experienced a significant increase in the demand of these product or its raw materials, resulting this in a challenge for these manufacturers since they were simply not ready to supply the demand currently being requested. One of these solar panels manufacturers is an electronics plant located in Manatí, Puerto Rico, were only half of the solar panels products demand is being supply at a “sold out” position. Thus, this project uses a Design for Six Sigma approach to increase the capacity of the Manatí solar panels related production. Key Terms ⎯ Capacity, Drying, Horizontal Vacuum Dryer, Solar Panels.