Case study: Trans-European Plastics. Essay

Q.1) Compute the following quantities for the current production process as well as for Mike’s and Ike’s plans, assuming the plans are implemented as described in the case.

Local procurement of materials provides an ease in production at the plant in Hangzhou. Costs are one area that attention is paid so that they can be kept within reason ensuring an affordable product. Throughout the process careful negotiations must be done to ensure there are adequate materials as well as manpower to fulfill the orders that have been placed by customers. The plant has the ability to produce a large amount of stock fans as well as special order merchandise. With specialty orders the process for procurement shift slightly because of the unique nature of the order and the variety of materials that may be used as well. With the procurement of the polymer done locally this also expedites the production process simply because logistics will not be an issue. The necessary machinery for manufacturing is onsite for quick manufacturing times that can quickly move into the production lines for assembly. Assembly leads way into storage for sales. Orders can be filled at the plant as well as shipped directly to the buyer both within China and internationally. Depending on the final destination of the merchandise there are multiple companies that are used to ensure the fastest shipping time to the buyer.

Founded in 1975, Custom Molds Inc. is the producer and supplier of bespoke molds and plastic connectors to the electronics industry. Building on its reputation, the company expanded in-house operations in the 1980s to include the limited production of plastic parts geared towards R&D based initiatives. During the early 1990s, the company realized that the shifting structure and market environment of the electronics industry was starting to impinge on the company’s manufacturing processes. This created a host of issues.

Recommendation:1. Improve Just-in-time systemSpartan Plastic Limited need to improve Just-in-time system, it is control aims to maintain inventory level at zero, with an immediate objective of reducing the capital tied to the inventories. It is an important principle that able to eliminating waste throughout the production system. The waste can occur, through excess inventories and overly large lot sizes, both of which can cause unnecessarily long customer lead times. Let's explain the role of the core JIT practices in enhancing manufacturing performance. JIT manufacturing requires the establishment of JIT supplier relationships with suppliers; Spartan in this case, that is able and willing to deliver the needed quantities of parts as the needs arise and without any defects.

The two pie charts compare the respective categories of US household garbage in 1990 and 2005. Overall, most of household garbage was the paper in both years while the percentage of plastics in 2005 rose by 10% compared to in 1990.

1. Diagnose the underlying causes of the difficulties that the JITD program was created to solve. What are the benefits and drawbacks of this program?

After closely reviewing the financial and production data, our accounting team has found that your traditional cost allocation is faulty and misleading. The costs of products A and C were over allocated and products B and D were under allocated causing deceptive information on the true profits of the company. Also, product B appears to be

Using the sample data given in Table 2-20, make a recommendation for how many units of each style Wally should make during the initial phase of production. Assume that all of the 10 styles in the sample problem are made in Hong Kong and that Wally’s initial production commitment must be at least 10,000 units. Ignore price differences among styles in your initial analysis.

After reading the case, one continues to come up with new problems and issues along the way that are related to information technologies. The three main problems we encountered in this case are lack of IT knowledge, inappropriate planning, and ineffective and inefficient Resource Management. Each of these issues requires specific attention to fix the next problem and so forth. The solution to attack each individual problem or issue will be explained as follows.

The purpose of this report is to analyze the opportunity to produce plastic components for cartridge production and choose the best alternative. It is predicted that the annual demand growth is a triangular distribution with a minimum of 5%, most likely of 17% and a maximum of 25%. Due to the continuous growth in the demand, the alternatives cannot be compared using just the data for 2010. An analysis is carried out for the time period 2011 to 2015 and the present worth of the net income is considered as the criteria to select the alternative. The analysis basically can be divided into 5 steps:

At first, identifying the potential problems. Though I will pay more attention to the top three classical problems, it is necessary to analyze other potential problems in specific project by investigating similar IT projects that is “Failure” or “Success” before kicking off project. The “similar” can be explained in many aspects, such as same goals, cost, scope, same industry, background and so on. I need to investigate how such similar project fails. For example, we assume that a company want to launch an ERP projects recently. In this area, there are many companies did it before. Failure of high-profile ERP projects is common. In order to avoid mistakes that usually occurs in such IT project, it can investigate many failure projects, such as Airforce, Saudi Telecom and so on. The project failure of Airforce due to the following reasons: weak teamwork & composition and lack of top management support. The Saudi Telecom’s failure attributes to lack of top management support, inadequate of company culture, and huge system customization (Aldammas & Al-Mudimigh, 2011). As you

This research question aims to think deeper on the circumstances of the overuse of plastic and paper, and what could happen more to the animals/birds, our environment, and our bodies if consumers keep on using plastic and paper products. This research question should be asked to raise awareness to users and most importantly designers, so they consider using other eco friendly material in designing their products.

The parts manufacturing process, especially for molds that were previously manufactured and maintained in inventory, is a somewhat different process than that for mold fabrication. Raw material ordered for this process usually takes a week to arrive, contributing to an extended lead time for delivery of parts to clients. Custom Molds' practice of ordering raw materials only after the specification review is clearly affecting the timely delivery of its orders, and in the parts manufacturing industry where delivery times are critical, this can affect the company's relationships with clients.

A polymer is a large molecule consisting of many smaller subunits known as monomers. There are different types of polymers and many uses for all of them. Even though people may not realize it polymers play an essential role in our everyday life. For polymers range from plastics, PVC, and Styrofoam to key structures in the human body like DNA and proteins which are key components to the human body that makes it possible for each of us to live and be unique. So with out polymers in our body we would be dead, and with out them in our society it would be a drastically changed for the worse to say the least

Production Rate i.e. P = 90 / hour and if we convert it on yearly basis, then it comes out to be 90*105*50 = 472, 500/ year as there are 105 hours in a week and 50 weeks in year (as given in the case)