IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/vmt-2y1962i2p108-116.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Problem in Materials Economy

Author

Listed:
  • A. G. Sterling

    (Metals & Controls, Inc., a Corporate Division of Texas Instruments Incorporated)

Abstract

This paper describes a study of several factors influencing the cost of a particular raw material blank, the policy changes based on this study, and the cost reduction accomplished by means of these changes. This general approach may be employed to reduce the raw material cost of a variety of machined components. The operation in question was to purchase hot rolled metal blanks and from these to machine closely dimensioned plates. To allow for process variabilities and to assure sufficient material removal to yield a high quality finished surface, we bought blanks thicker, hence heavier, than the finished plates. The material was expensive and the machining chips were not recoverable, so this excess blank weight represented a substantial annual cost. To minimize this loss we considered reducing the process variabilities, sorting blanks to narrow the range released for machining and to divert the others to less critical applications, and reducing the minimum thickness of blanks selected for machining, tolerating some loss due to machining rejects with the expectation that this would be outweighed by the reduction in cost of the average blank machined. As a result of these studies we were able to reduce the blank weight 8%, thus reducing our material cost for this single component more than $50,000 per year. "Management Technology", ISSN 0542-4917, was published as a separate journal from 1960 to 1964. In 1965 it was merged into Management Science.

Suggested Citation

  • A. G. Sterling, 1962. "A Problem in Materials Economy," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 0(2), pages 108-116, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:mt-2:y:1962:i:2:p:108-116
    DOI: 10.1287/mantech.2.2.108
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mantech.2.2.108
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mantech.2.2.108?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:mt-2:y:1962:i:2:p:108-116. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.