Relation diagram based process optimization of production preparation process for oversea factory

For manufacturing companies today, strategic and timely product development is essential to survive. Value chains, including the market, the production, and the supply of parts have to be considered for the world-wide point of view. Subsequently, some manufacturing companies are moving their factories abroad. On the other hand, most companies continuously perform quality control activities (QC) for producing high quality goods to satisfy consumers. The chapter proposes the method for the optimization of the production preparation processes for factories overseas. The method does not use the existing tasks, but the relations between physically designed and measured variables written in a relation diagram. The relation diagram is one of the seven new tools for quality control. The new method can optimize the process based on the physical relations and the essential constraints on the task order with the genetic algorithm. The new technique evaluated using a hot forging trial process and a 40% improvement of the lead time can be seen in comparison with the sequential trial.