Space Age Furniture Company
analytical Essay
2441 words
In today’s operational management arena, there are certain expectations from a managerial aspect that must be met in order to be successful. A comprehensive look at the Space Age Furniture Company will show exactly what the Materials Requirement Planning (MRP) calculations are for this company at present time and then take the information given in order to properly suggest ways to improve the sub-assemblies. In addition, there will be an analysis on the trade-offs between the overtime and inventory costs. A calculation will be made on the new MRP that will improve the base MRP. This paper will also compare and contrast the types of production processing to include the job shop, batch, repetitive, or continuous, and determine which the primary mode of operation should be and exactly why. A detailed description on how management can keep track of the job status and location during production will also be addressed. Finally, there will be a recommendation on they type of changes that need to occur that will be beneficial to the company and at the same time add value to the customer. This paper will conclude with summary of the major points. Overview This company manufactures tables and cabinets to hold microwave ovens and portable televisions. Looking at the data, it is apparent that there are ways to make this company more efficient in their manufacturing processes while looking at the overtime hours involved in the operations. Most of this companies products follow the very same assembly and production lines with the difference being that the Saturn microwave stand and the Gemini TV stand both contain a part refered to as 3079 which requires a special lathe in the production phase. This lathe requires a highly train... ... middle of paper ... ...ttp://newmrp.com/new-mrp-2/ Noori, S., Feylizadeh, M. R., Bagherpour, M., Zorriassatine, F., & Parkin, R. M. (2008). Optimization of material requirement planning by fuzzy multi-objective linear programming. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 222, 887-900. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/195144743?accountid=32521 Robinson, E. P., & Sahin, F. (2001). Economic production lot sizing with periodic costs and overtime. Decision Sciences, 32(3), 423-452. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/198075992?accountid=32521 Spence, A. M., & Porteus, E. L. (1987). Setup reduction and increased effective capacity. Management Science, 33(10), 1291. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/213309041?accountid=32521 Vonderembse, M.A. & White, G. P. (2013). Operations Management. San Diego, Ca: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
In this essay, the author
- Explains that in today's operational management arena, there are certain expectations from a managerial aspect that must be met in order to be successful.
- Explains that it costs $0.25 per week to hold any of these parts over and the cost of holding each subassembly in inventory is $0.75 per unit.
- Opines that if there were a fixed production, utilizing smoothed production operations would look like:
- Explains that when comparing overtime costs versus inventory costs, there has to be a comparison of the normal hours worked with the overtime wages earned and then compare those to the storage costs.
- Describes the regular hours and overtime hours, the overtime rate, and the total wages.
- Argues that maintaining a minimum inventory of part 3079, which is the bottleneck, would be the least expensive option when comparing overtime and the cost of holding inventory.
- Explains that there are two costs associated with holding inventory: financial and physical holding costs. traditional inventory models capture the trade-off between inventory holding and equipment setup costs, but fail to consider periodic fixed costs and regular-time production capacity constraints.
- Explains that space age furniture is a repetitive production processing facility based on routine schedules in high production volumes. lack of detailed schedule for manufacturing operations may cause difficulties in material requirements planning and may affect the production itself.
- Explains that many production systems, including mrp, use a schedule "push" approach to move materials through the processing operation. when an order is placed, the product is pushed from one work center to another according to that schedule.
- Analyzes the case study of the space age furniture company. they analyze the materials requirement planning (mrp) calculations for the company and suggest ways to improve the sub-assemblies.
- Explains that the space age company manufactures tables and cabinets to hold microwave ovens and portable televisions. the company uses the mrp system to reduce inventory and improve on-time delivery numbers.
- Explains how electronic data interchange (edi) connects the databases of different companies. mrp allows companies to place orders for goods and materials to arrive as they are needed to meet the projections of the master schedule.
- Illustrates how a fixed smooth production operation can be used to improve the space cost of each unit.
- Explains that new mrp will prioritize the requirements throughout the production process in a more efficient level.
- Recommends dynamic tool requirement planning (dtrp) and adaptive choice modeling (acm) to improve the company's operations.
- Cites alfieri, tolio, and urgo's project scheduling approach to production and material requirement planning in manufacturing-to-order environments.
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