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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 |
| ABBA Rubber International, Inc. | A manufacturer of rubber rollers for industrial use. This is an excellent tour of an industrial product manufacturing plant. Images are clear with great descriptions. From the home page, first click on "what we do" to get a perspective on what ABBA makes. | General manufacturing, machining, functional layouts, quality management. | * * * * |
| Air-x-changers | A manufacturer of air cooled heat exchangers used in air cooling systems. This is a good tour for exposure to manufacture of large products. There are actually two tours here. One is a tour of the production processes, the other is a tour of the quality control oriented functions. From the home page, check out "About air-x-changers" first. Then, go back to the home page and go through the process tour by clicking on "High-Tech Tour". After that tour, go back to "home" and click on "ISO 9001 Tour". | ISO9000, functional layout, industrial products, metal fabrication. | * * * * |
| 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. | * * * |
| Baja Spas | A concise overview of hot tub producton | Low-volume, large product production | * * |
| 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 | * * * |
| Buck Knives Factory Tour | The Buck Knives tour starts at the engineering and prototyping phase and takes you all the way through production. | Functional layout, departments specializing in production functions. | * * * |
| 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. | * * * * |
| Caseworks Furniture Tour | A tour of the manufacturing facility for producing wooden furniture. | Good images, virtually no explanation of the processes. | * * |
| Coffman | A manufacturer of hardwood stair parts, such as handrails, posts, and balusters. An excellent tour, with great images and descriptions of process steps. From the home page, first check out the "product menu" to get a feel for what they make. Then go back to the home page, select "About Coffman" and click on "The Coffman Plant Tour" at the bottom of the page. | Great process-oriented production. | * * * * |
| 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). | * * * * |
| FaucetCraft Faucets | A very good tour, photos, quicktime video of each process, and good descriptions. | High volume assembly. | * * * |
| 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. | * * * * |
| Golden Cheese Company of California | A manufacturer of cheese. This is a tour of the largest cheese, whey, and alcohol plant in the world, processing over a billion (yes, that?s a "b") pounds of milk per year. This is a very informative and well-designed tour. The images are great, and the text descriptions are among the best of any plant tours. Don't try to cross your eyes to get the 3D effect. You'll get a headache. | Food processing, large batch manufacturing, quality management | * * * * |
| 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 | |
| Jøtul | A manufacturer of woodburning stoves. This is a clear, short tour of the manufacturing process, from raw materials (scrap iron) to casting, finishing, and assembly. At the home page click on "virtual factory tour". | Functional layout, metal casting, batch processing. | * * * * |
| 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. | * * * * |
| Packaging Unlimited | A tour of the production processes used for manufacturing cardboard boxes | This is a good tour, with images of every process and Realtime videos of each machine in operation. Great to see how the machines actually work. | * * * |
| 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. | * * * |
| Samuel Garment Factory | A Chinese garment factory tour with very good images, but no descriptions. | High volume assembly. | * |
| 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 | * * * * |
| Switlik Parachute Company | Switlick is a producer of aviation life vests. This tour is simple and brief, but provides very straight-forward process to diagram or analyze. | Repetitive Manufacturing | * * |
| 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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