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There are lots of other tours out there, but here are some of the most informative and most fun. Enjoy.
Tour |
Brief Overview |
Relevant Topics |
Rating for In-Class Use or Homework Assignments |
| Allen Organ Factory Tour | A manufacturer or musical organs, the Allen factory tour provides images and descriptions of the processes making up the woodworking, electronics manufacturing, and assembly of their organs. | Functional layout, mixed processes. | * * * |
| Audio Research | A manufacturer of high-end audio equipment including amplifiers, pre-amplifiers, and CD players. This tour does not provide a great deal about "how" things are done, but has good images and general descriptions of the responsibilities for each department. From the home page click on "On-line tour" and then "continue" at the bottom of each screen. | Quality Management, ISO 9000, advanced technology. | * * * |
| Beach Beat Surfboards | From shaping to finishing. An excellent tour. Great photos, very detailed. | Low-volume, high variety, craftsman orientation. | * * * * |
| BMW South Carolina Factory Tour | The BMW tour is full video, broken into the two topics of efficiency and quality control. Short but detailed. ?Choose your speed? to start the tour. | Productivity, quality | * * * |
| Business Week's "The Making of" assorted tours | Business Week has a great series called "The Making of..." Which provides and overview of how a variety of products are produced. Topics range from Toyota's Tahara plant to clothing to golfclubs to a wind farm. Description plus a slide show is included for each. | Manufacturing, projects, quality, etc. | * * * * |
| Crownline Boats Factory Tour | Crownline Boats designs and manufacturers a variety of boats. This is an excellent tour, very detailed descriptions of process steps, excellent images. | Functional layout, high quality emphasis. | * * * * |
| E.D Foods | The E.D. Foods tour takes you through the production processes for a company that produces soup and sauce mixes. | Small, but good images. Good descriptions. | * * |
| Empire Snowboard Factory Tour | A brief, but interesting tour of the snowboard manufacturing process. | Small-scale manufacturing. | * * |
| Endot | A manufacturer of polyethylene water pipe and smoothwall innerduct. This is a short (about 12 images) easy tour that provides a nice explanation of a line flow. The small images are thumbnails, so clicking on them gives you a nice large version. The processing steps are very visible and understandable. | Line flow (almost continuous processing, but really probably batch). | * * * * |
| Gibson Montana Guitars | The acoustic guitar production process, from raw materials to completion. | An excellent tour. Very detailed. Lots of step-by-step images, good description. | * * * * |
| Hershey's Chocolate Tour | Chocolate processing from start to finish. Simplistic, but a good overview. Starts with the bean harvest goes through production. A good supply chain example. | A good supply chain example. | * * * |
| How Everyday Things Are Made | Not a tour, per se, but links to videos that show how a variety of everyday products are produced. | none | |
| Kokomo Opalescent Glass Company | A manufacturer of art glass using traditional, century-old techniques. A traditional batch processing operation using hand mixing and manual techniques. The tour includes descriptions of each processing step accompanied by "artsy" line drawings that emphasize the time tested traditional approaches used to make their product. Click on "tour of the factory" and go. | Batch processing, process industries | * * |
| Marshmallow Peeps | A producer of those little marshmallow chicks that are popular at Easter time. This is a simple tour of an even simpler process, but excellent to demo a product-oriented layout for high volume food manufacturing. | High volume, repetitive manufacturing | * * |
| New Balance Shoes | All stages in the production and assembly process are shown with extensive images and descriptions. A very good tour. | Complex assembly, high volume consumer apparel manufacturing. | * * * * |
| Norbest Turkey Production Tour | The Norbest Turkey tour shows the process, from the hatchery and baby chicks to a packaged bird. | Quality, food processing. | * * * * |
| Royal Cake Company | A cookie manufacturer. This is a tour of the manufacturing process used to make their hallmark product--the Oatmeal Creme Filled Cookie. Its a short tour for a simple process, but the graphics and descriptions are high quality. | High volume, continuous processing, food processing. | * * * |
| Sensenich | Sensenich manufactures metal airplane propellers. The link is directly to the start of the tours. The tour has good graphics and good description for a relatively uncomplicated manufacturing operation. For some reason, there doesn't seem to be a link to the tour from the Sensenich home page. | Process-oriented layout, precision machining. | * * * |
| Sierra Nevada BreweryTour | Sierra Nevada produces a variety of beers. This is a very good tour, starting with ingredients, going through all processes, and ending up with packaging. | Batch processing, high volume. | * * * * |
| Steinway & Sons | Producers of pianos. This is a great description of the piano-building process, with nice photos and descriptions. The construction is more like large-scale manufacturing, so your really don't get much of impression of the facilities. The images in the to | Large-scale manufacturing, quality management, skilled crafts. | * * * * |
| Stickley Furniture | Stickley is a producer of fine furniture. This tour provides an excellent overview of their processes. Photos and descriptions are very good. | Functional layout | * * * * |
| Tom's of Maine Factory Tour | A manufacturer soaps, toothpaste, deodorant, in Kennebunkport Maine, Tom's of Maine offers a brief, but informative set of photos and descriptions of their production processes (toothpaste is the focus of the tour). | Non-discrete manufacturing, quality emphasis. | * * * |
| Vaughn Hockey Equipment | The tour provides a very good overview of the processes used to produce goalie pads. The descriptions are a little brief, but the photos are outstanding. | Complex assembly, lots of hand-work. | * * * |
| West Park Hospital | A hospital focussing on rehabilitation and continuing care. This is a relatively short tour of the facility, showing and describing various attributes of the facility and its capabilities. | Service, health care | * * * |
| Winslow Life Rafts | An interesting tour of the processes used to produce large round liferafts, like those used on airplanes, cruise ships, etc. Clear and concise with good description and photos. | Complex assembly, very large products. High quality focus. | * * * |
| Xootr | Xootr produces scooters--the foot propelled variety. The site provides a nice linked process flow diagram and photos and descriptions of all processes. Its a very clear and compact, but complete tour. | Quality, Functional layout | * * * * |
| Yamaha | Yamaha manufactures a variety of musical instruments. This link goes directly to a starting point for 5 tours: trumpet, horn, and saxaphone, clarinet, and flute, because the English language home page does not link to this page (the Japanese language page does, however). While there are similarities, the manufacturing processes are quite different for these instruments. Select the tour you want and then follow the numbered sequence they provide. Yamaha's tours are among the best on the net. All of these tours are fantastic. Excellent detail, photos, drawings, definitions of technical terms, etc. | Musical instrument manufacturing, quality, product oriented manufacturing. | * * * * |
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