Peanut butter cracker sandwich manufacturing module

For many engineers, their first position after obtaining a B.S. degree is in manufacturing. Job titles like process engineer, product engineer, and quality engineer are common and are directly involved in manufacturing. Most engineering curricula do not cover manufacturing concepts. A student may not even have an opportunity through electives to study manufacturing since smaller engineering colleges rarely have a department of Manufacturing Engineering. A module on peanut butter cracker manufacturing was developed for the Introduction to Engineering course taken by most engineering students in their freshman year. The objective for the students is to design, build and then run a process to manufacture peanut butter cracker sandwiches. The culminating activity is a pilot production run where the students are assigned human operators for their process. The goal for the students is to make a profit during the pilot production run. Material costs, labor costs, quality specifications and selling price all determine whether or not the process was successful. The module includes activities where the students perform calculations and use Excel graphs to determine the process time required to make a profit, the impact of the number of operators on production, the interplay between fixed and variable costs, and the effect of yield on their profit. Students are required to write operating procedures and order supplies based on predictions of the quantity of sandwiches they will produce. Students also learn about quality control and process control, the cost of automation, development costs, and challenges in training operators. After more than two weeks of preparation, the students have 10 minutes to train their operators, and then the operators run the process for 10 minutes. After production day, the students write a report that includes an analysis of their production performance and suggested process modifications. Overall, the module, provides a fun and informative introduction to some fundamental manufacturing concepts.