IIE/RA CONTEST PROBLEMS 1 CONTEST PROBLEM 11 IIE/RA Contest Problems Eleventh Annual Contest: Rockland Steel Company At Rockland Steel, we make steel coils that are ultimately used to form many common consumer products. One of our production facilities is a hot strip mill that turns steel slabs into coils of steel. The operation utilizes a transportation system that consists of a fleet of self-loading coil carriers, as well as a coil field inventory storage area. Unfortunately, our present system is causing frequent productivity problems and is preventing the pursuit of additional business. We are hiring you as a consultant to analyze our system and to suggest improvements. Operation Details Production Our facility processes coils one order at a time. An order consists of up to 20 coils. All coils in an order are the same product and all are processed together sequentially. A coil looks similar to a very large roll of toilet tissue. Each coil may weigh between 5 and 25 megagrams (Mg), have a width of 100 to 190 centimeters, and have a strip length up to 600 meters. Our steel is the raw material ultimately used for making items like car bodies and large appliances. Twelve different products account for the bulk of our production. Appendix 1 illustrates the parameters of each product and the percentage of the orders attributed to each. Figure 1 illustrates the layout of the facilities. Hot Strip Mill (HSM) A hot steel slab is run through a sequence of 10 rolling mills to reduce it to a long, thin strip of a specified width and thickness. That strip is fed into one of two coilers at the end of the mill where the coil is formed. The HSM can process coils at a rate of 400 Mg/hour. The coils are then removed by automated equipment (requires 0.3 minutes) and placed on a staging area associated with each coiler. While in that staging area, steel bands are applied to hold the laps of the coil together. The application of the bands requires 15-25 seconds per band. All coils…