HEWLETT-PACKARD USES OPERATIONS-RESEARCH TO IMPROVE THE DESIGN OF A PRINTER PRODUCTION LINE

As Hewlett-Packard Corporation installed a system for manufacturing in k-jet printers in Vancouver, Washington, in 1993, it realized that the system would not be fast enough or reliable enough to meet its produc tion goals. At the time, the market for ink-jet printers was exploding , and any incremental printer shipments would translate directly into market share and revenue gains. The company undertook a simulation pro ject to develop recommendations for design changes to improve the syst em performance but concluded that that project would take too long to be useful. MIT researchers used analytical methods to predict capacity and to determine the sizes and locations of buffers that would increa se capacity at the cost of a minor increase in inventory. HP's impleme ntation of this work yielded incremental revenues of about $280 millio n in printer sales and additional revenues from ancillary products, re placement inkjet cartridges, media, and related items. Productivity in creased about 50 percent, making the assembly of the print engine cost competitive. Finally, HP developed a method of creating rapid and eff ective system designs in the future.