Operations Management: Factors behind Increased Cookie Production

The main goal of the Cookies unit was to solve the Unit Problem. The unit problem introduced us to the Woos, the owners of a cookie bakery. The Woos want to find the most profitable combination of plain and iced cookies to bake and sell in their store. We were given several constraints for this problem. According to the Woo’s recipes, a dozen normal cookies requires one pound of cookie dough, and a dozen iced cookies requires .7 pounds of cookie dough. The Woo family only has 110 pounds of cookie dough in stock, which will affect the number of cookies that can be made. The iced cookies also need icing, obviously. A dozen of iced cookies required .4 pounds of icing and the Woos only have 32 pounds of icing in stock.

First, Shaich assembled a team to simplify the costly bread-making process by developing a method of forming and freezing bread dough for later baking. This process eliminated the need for a professional baker on

Imagine that you have decided to open a small ice cream stand on campus called "Ice-Campusades." You are very excited because you love ice cream (delicious!) and this is a fun way for you to apply your business and economics skills! Here is the first month's scenario--you order the same number (and the same variety) of ice creams each day from the ice cream suppliers, and your ice creams are always marked at $1.50 each. However, you notice that there are days when ice creams remain unsold but other days when there are not enough ice creams for the number of customers.

However, forecast errors will also lead to unhappy customers, lost sales, and excessive inventory. To minimize errors, retailers should find the right demand forecast. Retailers do not want to have a lot of inventory sitting in the back room and too little inventory that will cause out of stock. Holding huge inventory will cause a retailer to have more expenses and decrease their profit if item is not sold especially if the product is innovative type like electronics. The challenge is to balance the inventory with demand. Communication and contribution from people in functional area is also important to create better information and improve overall accuracy. At this time, customer satisfaction will start to decrease. For example, MPRNews says one of Target loyal customer, Ann Hendricks, she is disappointed with target store in St.Paul. “Too many times, she says that store is out of the milk, coffee, bread, pasta and other staples she wants. At Target, sometimes the whole section of cheeses is blank. There's nothing in there” (Moylan). A loyal customer like Ann Hendricks goes to the Lunds & Byerlys store in downtown St. Paul to buy her grocery

(i.e. products that they get to order only once because of long supplier lead times). First they determine a forecast for an item and then they have a process for converting that forecast into an order quantity.

Assuming that we add another oven, the cycle time of the ovens would be 5 minutes. The new bottleneck for the entire process would now be that of mixing the ingredients and dishing the cookies onto the tray, a process which takes 8 minutes for 1 batch of cookies.

The plant has the ovens, the vats, the prep areas, and the packaging conveyor belts that will be needed to produce the goods to fulfill the new contracts. This plant will have five times the baking production capacity as the current Cambridge plant. A small fleet of trucks, most with refrigeration units, was also included in the package deal so the new plant will not be contracting with a trucking company to get their goods to customers.

Apple Inc. is one of the largest technology companies in the world. The company develops consumer electronic gadgets such as smartphones, computers, desktops, laptops, iPods and tablets. The company was formed in 1976 by Steve Jobs with an intention of making computers but later it changed its focus to include the manufacturing of consumer electronics. However, the company was dealt a big blow when its chief executive officer and founder Steve Jobs died. The company will therefore have to search for ways in which it will maintain its market dominance as well as capture new and emerging markets. This research therefore seeks to establish how Apple forecasts demand and manages its inventory (Apple Computer Inc., 2006).

A long-time friend insists that Natalie has to somehow include cookies in her business plan. After a series of brainstorming sessions, Natalie settles on the idea of operating a cookie-making school. She will start on a part-time basis and offer her services in

The Pillsbury Cookie Challenge is a case study written by Natalie Mauro under the supervision of Professor Allison Johnson. The case study creates an open discussion about what the marketing manager of the refrigerated baked goods category for Canada General Mills should do to revive his products. Ivan Guillen, the marketing manager, was faced with tough challenges. He was initially “…faced with the challenge of developing a strategy that would lead to improved business performance on his category” (Johnson and Mauro, p.1, 2011). To clarify, Guillen’s category is refrigerated baked goods (RBG), which means, this category is his marketing responsibility. The issue here is that “RBG was GMCC’s fourth largest category, and its performance over the past two years had been less than stellar” (Johnson and Mauro, p.1, 2011). It is important to note that GMCC stands for General Mills Canada Corporation. Pillsbury has enjoyed majority market share in the RBG category in Canada, however, recently, the market was experiencing only moderate growth. Guillen was disappointed that their goal of 5%-7% market growth was not being achieved mainly in the refrigerated cookie dough segment. To be exact, their volume growth for two years was flat and they were having difficulty reaching new households. There was a shift among consumer’s purchases, which Guillen was challenged to figure out why.

By taking a more collaborative approach, major improvement could be made. One way is by embracing the concept of “Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment” (CPFR) which have been developed and successfully employed by leading food retailers. It foresees that data is shared and discussed actively between retailers and suppliers, e.g. by producing joint forecast on annual production volumes, also considering foreseeable flunctuations. With a better understanding of the mutual dependencies, the planning basisi could be improve and complexity reduced. On the short term planning basis, making aviable sales data collected in-store 9from the scanner-equipped cash registers) to suppliers in real time allows suppliers to produce more accuratelty to the actual demand, and thus reducing cost for buffers and excess inventory (Trebilcock 006). Of course, Aldi will have to receive a certain share of these benefits. Going one step further would be to add ”Category Management” to Aldi’s supplier collaboration approach to optimise assortment towards the end of customer needs.

“Beep! Beep! Beep! Beeeeeeep!” my alarm clock was piercing my eardrums. I got up slowly, my alarm clock still going off. It seemed as if the loudness was just getting louder and louder. Finally, I stumbled out of bed, turning my alarm off. After I got dressed, I went downstairs to pack my mother’s amazing cookies for school. Her secret is adding the right measure of mixing because mixing develops gluten in the sugar, making the cookies a chewy consistency, adding the right measure of shape because round dough balls take longer to bake, resulting in softer, thicker cookies, besides adding the correct amount of spacing because cookies baked at low temperatures spread more during baking and need approximately 2 inches between them. It also depends on the temperature, and the quantity of time you bake them for because a low temperature and longer baking time yield crisper, thinner cookies; a higher heat and shorter baking time makes softer, thicker cookies. My mom taught me these rules of cooking when I was around five. What can I say, I guess I just have a way of cooking.

They will become much better at making one type of cookie rather than many; total flow time will

The baking trays are required for three activities, namely, filling it and keeping it ready for baking, baking it in the oven, and cooling it after baking is done. Since the baking and cooling processes will be going on for at most one tray at a given time and the mixing process gets material ready for at most three trays of one dozen each, five trays would be sufficient, though, even three trays would serve the purpose if mixing and filling activities are done properly. Hence, it is advisable for Kristen 's Cookie Company to go for at least three baking trays to maximize its productivity.

Another strength of Auditing Alchemy’s internal control system is there extensive amount of check and balances throughout the production process. The organization sets budgeted production goals based on historical cost and usage standards for both the organization as a whole and different product types. Each type of sphere is placed in its respective bin and is tallied; once each sphere has been differentiated and tallied, they are compared against the production budget. The actual sphere production is compared with budgeted production amounts to verify that production was efficiently and effectively performed. Production staff and production manager Jennifer Smith verify that the budgeted and actual production amounts are in agreement. If there is variance between budgeted and actual production, the production manager requires staff to recount actual production to verify that no human or clerical errors have occurred. If the actual inventory count still does not match the budgeted production, then the production tally sheet is handed over to the production manager for