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Hewlett-Packard Uses Operations Research to Improve the Design of a Printer Production Line

Author

Listed:
  • Mitchell Burman

    (Analytics, Inc., 101 Rogers Street, Suite 216, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142)

  • Stanley B. Gershwin

    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 35-331, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139)

  • Curtis Suyematsu

    (Hewlett-Packard Company, PO Box 8906, Vancouver, Washington 98668-8906)

Abstract

As Hewlett-Packard Corporation installed a system for manufacturing ink-jet printers in Vancouver, Washington, in 1993, it realized that the system would not be fast enough or reliable enough to meet its production 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 project to develop recommendations for design changes to improve the system 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 increase capacity at the cost of a minor increase in inventory. HP's implementation of this work yielded incremental revenues of about $280 million in printer sales and additional revenues from ancillary products, replacement ink-jet cartridges, media, and related items. Productivity increased about 50 percent, making the assembly of the print engine cost competitive. Finally, HP developed a method of creating rapid and effective system designs in the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Mitchell Burman & Stanley B. Gershwin & Curtis Suyematsu, 1998. "Hewlett-Packard Uses Operations Research to Improve the Design of a Printer Production Line," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 28(1), pages 24-36, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:28:y:1998:i:1:p:24-36
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.28.1.24
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Stanley B. Gershwin, 1987. "An Efficient Decomposition Method for the Approximate Evaluation of Tandem Queues with Finite Storage Space and Blocking," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(2), pages 291-305, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Peter C. Bell & Chris K. Anderson & Stephen P. Kaiser, 2003. "Strategic Operations Research and the Edelman Prize Finalist Applications 1989--1998," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 51(1), pages 17-31, February.
    2. Marcello Colledani & Stanley Gershwin, 2013. "A decomposition method for approximate evaluation of continuous flow multi-stage lines with general Markovian machines," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 209(1), pages 5-40, October.
    3. Marcello Colledani & Tullio Tolio, 2011. "Performance evaluation of transfer lines with general repair times and multiple failure modes," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 31-65, January.
    4. George Liberopoulos & Panagiotis Tsarouhas, 2002. "Systems Analysis Speeds Up Chipita's Food-Processing Line," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 32(3), pages 62-76, June.
    5. Pascual, R. & Godoy, D. & Louit, D.M., 2011. "Throughput centered prioritization of machines in transfer lines," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 96(10), pages 1396-1401.
    6. Peter C. Bell & Chris K. Anderson, 2002. "In Search of Strategic Operations Research/Management Science," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 32(2), pages 28-40, April.
    7. Stefan Helber, 2000. "Kapitalwertorientierte Pufferallokation in stochastischen Fließproduktionssystemen," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 211-233, May.

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