Donner Company Essay

8. Why might Avion want to reduce the lead times on its purchased materials and components?

What is the normal process flow of the production system at Donner? Draw a process flow diagram.

= Setup Time + Run Time (Per Hole) * No. of Holes drilled on each circuit board * No. of boards

“Auerbach Enterprises uses machine hours as the cost driver to assign overhead costs to the air conditioners. The company has used a company-wide predetermined overhead rate in past years, but the new controller, Bennie Leon, is considering the use of departmental overhead rates beginning with the next year. “(Schneider, 2012). One product is affected more than the other by use of departmental rates rather than companywide rate.

Riordan Manufacturing 's current process is not very efficient. It calls for multiple suppliers to ship parts to Riordan 's raw material storage area at regular intervals. These intervals have been set up in advance using production history as a guideline. This process causes a huge inventory spike during slow production times thus requiring a large amount of storage space and upfront costs. There is not a standardized method for the individual assembly areas to communicate parts shortages back to the raw material storage area. Also, as indicated during our analysis, the network infrastructure and current systems at the plant are very outdated causing system slowdowns and reducing plant efficiency.

The management team at Stone Computers hold weekly operational meetings to inform the operations team of the importance of maintaining the key objectives shown above in table 2, in this meeting we discuss what our current key performance indicators (KPI) are and how we can improve these to meet the customer and the stakeholder’s requirements. We set daily targets for the production line to try and meet the demand of the service level of agreement. As a progress controller I analyse the orders and prioritise the sequence in which they go down into production to be processed to try and keep our target greater 90% KPI.

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.

This is the method to solve the problem at the end result. This will help company get rid of employees who have an unethical attitude. Keeping these people will have negative influence for company in the future as occurring now. In addition, company might lose the most talented person in company as a disadvantage.

Their sales orders were typically characterized by customization, low volumes and high margins. Their business also offered plant design and technical consulting services to industrial clients

(Assume that the amount of debt issued to reach the target debt-to-capital ratio is going to be maintained forever. Use the tax rates assumed in the attached Excel file).

What are the main duties of each of the positions that comprise Abernethy and Chapman’s engagement team?

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.

Finally Acme discovers the way to reduce the cost by 20% and they won the contract.  Omega may have won the battle, but Acme has won the war because its mechanistic structure fosters a concern for technical efficiency and cost reduction in what is a routine manufacturing environment. In this particular case, Acme decides to run a "tight ship" (mechanistic structure) in order to increase productivity and efficiency, and to decrease costs. The advantage of this strategy is that they can undersell their competition (Omega) by selling at a lower cost. Omega, on the other hand, is nearly too opposite. They run a more organic structure, which relies heavily upon communication, delegation and teamwork. This strategy allows Omega to effectively compete with Acme by stressing reliability and by placing emphasis on quality.

Supply change management (SCM) is active in many organizations today. The purpose of SCM is to maximize the company value in order maintain a competitive advantage in the market place. As an Operational Managers (OM) it is essential to oversee the supply chain within an organization. The OM responsibility is to manage the supply chain flow, and to ensure the supply chain has a quality design in order to reduce cost and drive efficiency. (Reid & Sanders, 2010) An organization supply chain includes activities such as product development, sourcing, productions, logistics, material, and other information systems needed to coordinate the movement of goods from suppliers to manufactures, and to final customers.

While the customized nature of B&B’s products isn’t conducive to the type of streamlining seen in volume manufacturing applications, they can