The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

12-2015

Culminating Project Type

Starred Paper

Degree Name

Engineering: M.E.M

Department

Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

College

College of Science and Engineering

First Advisor

Ben Baliga

Second Advisor

Hiral A. Shah

Third Advisor

Chieh Y. Cheng

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

six sigma, productivity, quality control, quality management, bottleneck, improvement.

Abstract

The development of smart cards already has a nearly 20-year history in the world. As the improvement of producing techniques and degree of the popularity become more mature, smart card’s development is stepping into a high-speed period. The application of smart cards is widely used in various fields such as telecommunication, financials, transportation, social security, medical treatment, etc. This smart card company was undergoing a downturn times due to the competitive pressure and bottleneck process on assembly line. Therefore the objectives of this project were to help the company becoming competitive by increasing the yield and maintaining the decent qualities of smart cards.

The project conducted DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analysis, Improve, Control) process, a very important methodology of Six Sigma, to help this company improving the productivity in the competitive smart cards market without adding any unvalued equipment or additional labor. At the same time maintained the quality of smart cards to satisfy the customers. Nowadays Six Sigma is becoming popular especially in manufacturing fields and industrial sectors as a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. This project eventually presented the desirable results and achievements to illustrate the significance of applying Six Sigma.

Comments/Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all those who have helped me to finish this starred paper. Firstly, I am deeply grateful to my committee chair, Dr. Ben Baliga, who have checked through my paper with patience and given me instructive suggestions. Then thanks to my professors, Dr. Shah and Dr. Cheng. Finally, I am very grateful to my lovely friends who have helped me with my paper.

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