Angel Pottery Case Paper

From the time 19-year-old Ashley was assigned an independent study and she took the Wilton cake decorating classes, Ashley knew she had found a new love. Her ability to create roses in any color she wanted, to use a piping transfer sheet to make an intricate design on a cake, and to fill cupcakes with chocolate ganache allowed her to feel a sense of control and like she was a true artist. So what exactly is cake decorating? It is a form of art that uses all different types of designs and decorations to take a basic cake and make it look more intricate-- and hopefully-- more beautiful. Over the past 10 years, cake decorating products have become more accessible to the general public, making it easier for the at home worker to achieve success

“The Goal” by Goldratt is a book about the Theory of Constraints, TOC. It is about the behavior of manufacturing facilities. It deals with bottlenecks that are the manufacturing constraints and the variability that creates them. The book states that a manufacturing organization cannot run at 100% and that you cannot balance the assembly line. It seems that your efforts for efficiency must be focused on the worst bottleneck. The loss caused by a bottleneck is a loss for the entire system. Focusing on improving the throughput of the bottleneck increases the flow for the entire manufacturing line. If there is a bottleneck, then all other areas are capable of excess capacity. Don’t try to improve non-bottlenecks, as

Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a group of data that deals with something that may limit or constrain a business’s ability to achieve their goals (Linton, 2016). TOC is the idea that the weakest link will be the strongest you can be and when you improve the weakest link you will improve the process overall. The key to improving the constraint or the weakest link is to be able to recognize and manage those limitations with the five steps of TOC (Linton, 2016). The first step of TOC is to identify the constraints. Nissan would need to identify its constraint, which is the bottleneck in their production line. Step two

The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a relatively new managerial philosophy that has been steadily evolving since the early 1980s. TOC does advocate buffers at inventory at selected points to ensure that neither the constraint nor the customer is left waiting. Lean aims to reduce lead time and inventory and thus costs by eliminating waste; TOC aims to reduce lead time and inventory in order to gain capacity, increase Throughput (i.e. the rate at which money is generated through the sale of products) and provide a competitive edge – thus enabling the business to grow.

A production facility seems like the classical example in terms of analyzing the Theory of Constraints. As time has evolved production facilities have become larger, more complicated and depend on technology more than ever. With that said, even the most advanced of processes have at least one constraint (Theory of Constraints principle) and that constraint must be properly managed.

CKC’s operation setup requires different approaches when dealing with suppliers to ensure the raw materials are on hand when needed. The “delivery and serve” component can be scheduled in advance providing sufficient time to order supplies. On the other hand, the “Delivery only” component requires that the company anticipate the level of supplies required on a daily basis, where they have been known to run out of some ingredients from time to time. The quality of finished products is determined by the ingredients going into each product and the process to produce them. Lean systems approach focus on high quality combined with reducing excessive inventory and removing non-value added activities from operation process. Any company, or process area within a company, can benefit from a lean systems approach. In the end, lean will translate into “Continuous Process Improvement, and CKC can definitely benefit from this approach.

In the book, the concept of "constraint" is clearly explained by an example. Alex takes a group of boy scouts on an overnight hike. The slowest boy in the group, Herbie, exemplifies all the characteristics of a constraint. Because he is very slow, it becomes very difficult for Alex to keep the boys in line. Boys in front of Herbie hike faster than the other boys. Herbie being a constraint causes large gaps between the boys in the line. This hiking trip helps Alex discover some simple processes. He uses his findings to turn his plant in the right direction. This example also explains the concepts of dependable events and statistical fluctuations. Statistical fluctuations imply that most of the factors critical to running a plant successfully cannot be determined precisely ahead of time. In a system with dependable events, like an assembly line in a plant, if a process lags behind all the process slows down. This explains the high level of inventories piled up in front of the NCX-10 machine and the heat-treat in his plant. Although a non-bottleneck process can produce at full capacity, throughput of the whole system will depend on the capacity of the bottleneck processes of the system. If bottleneck processes lag behind the non-bottleneck processes then higher work-in-process and excess inventories will pile up. He finds that the throughput of the

The concept of Heijunka was originally developed for the automotive industry by Toyota. Heijunka was defined as the foundation of the Toyota Production System approach to just-in-time processes. Inventory costs are minimized by having the parts required arrive at their point of use only as they are needed. Heijunka is the process of removing unevenness or irregularity within the process in order to reduce waste in the production [1]. It is a Japanese term meaning “leveling”. The goal of heijunka is to reduce the fluctuating customer demand which can result in increased overtime. Pushing a process toward an ideal smoothness in production also pushes the process to the highest degree of flexibility and responsiveness to

The primary objective of lean is to produce more value for customers with fewer resources. The advantage of lean production is it helps in reducing the cost of production by eliminating unnecessary materials used in production. Disadvantages of lean production are that it depends on the inventory the supplier keeps in his hand of which the suppliers often prefer in keeping a small amount of stock which is not acceptable in a lean production system. The material supply can delay being delivered to the production house due to unavoidable circumstances that may include transportation breakdown, suppliers strike or specific product not available (Theory of Constraints

Principles of lean thinking have been broadly accepted by many manufacturing operations and have been applied successfully across many. Different authors define it distinctively. Lean manufacturing is most frequently associated with the elimination of seven important wastes to ameliorate the effects of variability in supply, processing time or demand defined it as a philosophy of manufacturing that focuses on delivering the highest quality product on time and at the lowest cost. Worley (2004) defined it as the systematic removal of waste by all members of the organization from all areas of the value stream. Briefly, it is called lean as it uses less, or the minimum of everything required to produce a

In our economy today we face major issues dealing with manufacturing with how do we build or retain the capacity and competitive edge in the global market? Well manufactured is measured in a number of ways, such as statistics and analyses. These metrics range from the amount and type of goods produced, to a detailed breakdown of the people who contribute to this production, to the economic impact of both. But knowing the market is tough using lean manufacturing techniques as a tool any company can maintain control of an operation of any business.

Between the 1940s and 50s, Taiichi Ohno of Toyota applied the Kanban logic in their Toyota Production System (TPS) to support non-centralized “pull” production control. In the post-depression era of 1970s, Kanban was popularized in the manufacturing industry as a tool for Lean Manufacturing. Of late, many thought-leaders in various industries have found its applicability beyond the manufacturing industry as well.

Lean manufacturing is a method of reducing waste (muda) in the manufacturing system. It also considers the waste due to overload and waste dude to over burden. Lean manufacturing also best known as Toyota production system or kaizen production system. Although the Toyota production system was introduced more than a century ago it has continue to develop over time. It was practiced by the Henry Ford for the manufacturing of Ford model T which was very successful between the years 1908 to 1920 which almost sold 2 Million cars a year. Later on it was developed by the Toyota in Japan. The main idea behind the lean manufacturing is to value the customer needs by reducing the waste and achieving good products with more value by consuming less resources. Muda is defined as the material or the activity for which the customer is not willing to pay. The main task of lean manufacturing is to identify Muda and to get rid of it. These products are created by using less human effort, less space, less capital, less time to produce high quality.

The modern concept of lean management as used today can be traced back to the Toyota Production System (TPS). The manufacturing philosophy was pioneered by Japanese engineers to emphasize the minimization of waste and focus on “doing it right the first time” (Davis and Heineke, 2005). Engineers knew that waste was something that customers were not willing to pay for thus they should try and eliminate it. This led to the discovery that inventory is essentially waste. Keeping parts and products in stock adds no value to a company, and should be eliminated. Although lean production began in Japan, it now has been successfully implemented across the globe (Agus and Hajinoor, 2012).

Every company, firm, or organization has a need to know and understand how to plan for production and the inventory needed to sustain it. During the reconstruction following World War Two an atmosphere was present that enabled pioneering minds just as Deming to institute several industrial theories into practice. Having embraced the concepts whole heartedly, these theories enabled post war Japan to become a world leader in development and production. According to Evans & Lindsay (2010), these concepts began to take root and have great effect on how business was conducted globally. One of these concept that still to this day are displaying complete relevance is that of Just-In-Time (JIT). It must be understood that JIT in time is only a supporting process of larger concepts such Lean production and inventory control, and how they interact with push or pull of materials within the production plan; How the concept of Kanban can be instituted to farther support the JIT process.