Albatross Anchor Proposal

Andrews Corporation’s production department coordinates and facilitates the assembly lines for the products. There are two crucial factors that the production department focuses on: automation and production capacity.

| The Purpose of this project is to increase overall sales by developing new products, increasing productivity and national presence and reducing dependence on equipment suppliers. To accomplish this creation of a new manufacturing plant is required. The plant will be built in a

One of the biggest needs for improvement was the assembly process. Although several changes were made throughout the years, quality and efficiency still fell below expectations. Hinrichs implemented the newly developed assembly which consists of two separate work stations that allowed operators in the adjacent stations to share the expensive balancer machine. These assembly cells were much more efficient as workers were no longer forced to wait for another person or machine in the process. Each cell was built like the other with quick turn set-up which created flexibility in the process while also reducing tooling inventory by almost a half. Now cells

Based on the information presented in the scenario/case study discuss Albatross Anchor’s competitiveness in relation to (please address all items in the below list and provide support for your conclusions):

Each of the following parts describes a firm that was an early mover in its market. In light of the information provided, indicate whether the firm’s position as an early mover is likely to be the basis of a sustainable competitive advantage, and explain why or why not. (2 points: 1 point each)

My name is Aiden and KU Consulting has asked me to prepare a bid on the consulting job with Albatross Anchor. With the information provided to me I am able to go through and analyze the operation as it is running and suggest how to improve the operations to be more competitive with the other anchor manufactures and to increase profits for the company, Albatross has been in business since 1976 with four family members. It has grown to employee one hundred and thirty people. The location of the manufacture is located in a rural suburb it is on twelve acres in Small-town, USA.

The amount of work in progress is minimized. Fewer tools are needed. The parts do not have to travel between the work stations. The control systems becomes redundant, everything takes place in the garage.

The Waved Albatross is the largest bird of the Galapagos Islands, but is only found on one of them - Espanola. Its wingspan is 7-8 feet and can grow up to 34 inches in length. It usually weighs in at about 7-11 pounds. They have very distinctive coloring, with a white head, cream neck, brown body, bright yellow beak, and blue feet. Many people have observed their walking as awkward, but when they take off they are beautiful and elegant.

An albatross crosses thousands of kilometres of ocean during a single foraging trip. Once airborne the albatross does not flap its wings and expends almost no energy through muscle use. For many years scientists have wondered how the energy requirement for this foraging strategy is sustained. New work has now uncovered the albatrosses secrets of flying for free.

Applying the new policy to rationalise BAL’s supplier base over six years, BAL achieved direct cost savings by decrease the base of supplier, and the next target was 600. In order to verify whether BAL’s suppliers were authorised and qualified to produce the necessary parts, BAL needed to ensure any “flyaway” items purchased or manufactured had complete traceability.

The third core competency is Boeing’s dynamic assembly line. This was a valuable change to Boeing because it reduced assembly time by 50%, or from 22 days down to 11 days. The planes move 80 feet every shift and lights determine the status of the assembly line. Dynamic assembly lines are costly to imitate and rare due to the size of the plant and the components used in order to pull such a large craft throughout the building. The only substitute of a dynamic assembly line is a static assembly line, and the dynamic one performs much more efficiently.

The manufacturing cost can be lower as the rearrangement of the production line to meet urgent order can be minimize or even eliminated.

Boeing made use of lean techniques in their production system and increased its production by 50% and also reduced its floor space by 40%. Assembling a Boeing 737 is a typical job. Workers should take 367,000 parts, an same number of bolts, rivets, other equipment and 36 miles (58 kilometres) of electrical wire and then keep them all combined to make an airplane [2]. Engineers to machinists were involved in lean (reducing waste) in the factory. By creating an assembly line, aircraft will pass through the workers were they going to concentrate on assembling. Allocating all employees in the factory building and organising special teams helped a lot to solve the errors in the assembly line [2]. In the assembly line, there are eight beacon lights which reflect the production status. If everything is good it shows green colour. If an error occurs, the worker will press a button and the green light will changes to yellow and the panel board will shows the category of the problem(which category it is related to). The worker will pass on to a computer and writes about the problem in a brief manner and the problem should be assigned to special team to solve it within 30 minutes if not, the light turns to purple and the assembly line will shuts down. This moving assembly is the icon of factory’s lean strategies.

The move to the state-of-the-art facility will result in the organization being more efficient and will as well result in quicker pull of inventory and quicker shipment. Furthermore, stock will be handled more efficiently with less errors resulting in higher profits for the organization.

advantage of this is there will be no need to store large quantities which will give you the benefit of needing inventory space and will keep inventory costs low